Can Tim Scott's Optimism Win Over The GOP?

Publish Date: 2023/5/22

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All right. Well, I am going to make a really bold prediction. In fact, my most ironclad 538 prediction I have ever made, which is that we're going to be back here next Monday talking about this. In the meantime, Tuesday. Oh, yeah. It's Memorial Day. Wow. Wow. Your prediction is already wrong. My prediction is already wrong. Okay. Next Tuesday. Damn, you got me.

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk, and get ready for a big week in politics. So for starters, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott officially kicked off his presidential campaign in North Charleston Monday morning. He's starting the race in the low single digits in national polls, but he has a lot of campaign cash and plenty of goodwill amongst Republican lawmakers, donors, and media. So will he be able to convert that

potential energy into something more, say, kinetic in the polls, ha ha ha. We also expect the long-teased Ron DeSantis presidential campaign to become a reality this week. According to reports, he could make it official as soon as Wednesday. Trump's lead over the Florida governor, according to our polling averages, has doubled from 15 points to 30 points over the past few months. So will making it all official give DeSantis the momentum to turn that around?

We'll find out. And lest we forget, according to the Treasury Department, we are just a week or so away from a possible default on the nation's debt. President Biden is back from the G7 summit in Japan, and he and House Speaker McCarthy kicked off new negotiations on Monday. So what are the sticking points? And what do Americans actually want out of all of this?

Here with me to kick things off talking about Scott's presidential campaign is national politics reporter for the AP Meg Kennard. She's a longtime South Carolinian and is joining us after just leaving Scott's kickoff rally. Welcome to the podcast, Meg. Hello. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Glad to have you here. Also here with us is data columnist at The Washington Post, David Beiler. He recently wrote up his analysis suggesting that, quote, Tim Scott is in a better position than you might think. Welcome to the podcast, David. Thanks for having me. And

And also here with us is senior elections analyst Jeffrey Skelly, who everyone already knows. Hello, Jeffrey, and welcome. Hey, Galen. So, Tim Scott filed his paperwork last Friday, but he held a rally this morning, really officially kicking things off. Here's a taste of that rally. I disrupt their narrative. I threaten their control. The truth of my life disrupts their lies. I will proclaim these truths from the highest mountaintop.

And I will proclaim these truths in the deepest valley. I will take our message to the boardrooms. But I will also take it to the classrooms. I will take it to a gymnasium filled with friends. But I will also take it to an inner city church filled with skeptics. I have lived the American dream. I hold these truths to be self-evident.

that all men and women are created equal, endowed by our creator with the right to be free. Meg, you have been a reporter in the Palmetto State for a long time. You've been covering Tim Scott for years. What's his backstory and what kind of pitches he making?

It's mostly an optimistic pitch, if I had to put one word on it. Tim Scott talks a lot about his own personal biography. Let's not forget, he is the Senate's sole Black Republican at this point. And he's not afraid in his campaign speeches, which have been, you know, not really campaign speeches up until today, but it all kind of has sounded very similar. He's been unafraid to talk directly about race.

He knows that oftentimes in rooms of conservatives, obviously, definitely in the Senate, his is the only blackface among Republicans. And he isn't shying away from that, has talked a lot about growing up in poverty here in North Charleston, the product of a divorced family. His mother was a single mother and has worked long hours to take care of him and his brother. And he flicks at a lot of that back

and kind of says, "Hey, look, America, I have a story that may be similar to some of yours. You know, I've come a really long way, but I want to help you come a long way, too." And so it's that sort of optimism that we've heard from him through the years when he was in the South Carolina State House, even before that in Charleston County Council,

and then in the U.S. House for a term before he went to the Senate in 2012. And he's really always kind of kept that messaging, some piece of what he says in public and at different campaign events. And that's definitely what we heard a lot of in his launch speech. Okay, Meg, so that's his biography. And I also watched his launch speech. It was, I thought, pretty impressive as far as these things go. Very charismatic, a lot of crowd work, a lot of amens.

But beyond his biography, what do we know about Tim Scott as a politician? Is he conservative, moderate, Trumpy, never Trumpy? Like, how do we place him beyond a sort of optimistic promoter of the American dream?

I think it'd be fair to put Tim Scott certainly in the conservative part of that spectrum of ideological belief. On a lot of his policies, frankly, he seems pretty mainstream Republican. He's certainly anti-abortion.

and talks often about protecting life. He did say recently, when asked on television if he would support the bill sponsored in the Senate by his fellow South Carolinian, Lindsey Graham, to ban abortions nationally after 15 weeks. And he said he would sign that as president. That's an issue where we have seen a lot of candidates in the GOP field really being asked to put down a marker in terms of what timelines they would or wouldn't support.

So there are those policies. He also advocates strongly for reforming the U.S. immigration policies. He took a lot of time in his campaign speech to talk about what he sees as failures in the Biden administration, immigration certainly among them. So he's not a middle-of-the-road Republican. He leans hard into some of those conservative pieces.

But he also, you know, along with that, talks about other social issues, quote-unquote woke issues, that have been playing out also largely in the GOP field. He said he wants to have, you know, not CRT in schools, but ABCs. Again, that's something we've heard in a lot of his speeches. But it certainly, you know, kind of gives us a flavor for some of the policies that he might support were he to become the GOP nominee or even president.

So essentially, there's some of the more like old school republicanism that you might associate with,

abortion politics or entitlement reform or, you know, a more sort of religious movement conservatism, but also this new form of more Trumpy conservatism, which does dive right into the new cultural issues of like wokeism and COVID and China and immigration and things like that. I'm interested, Jeffrey and David, to hear a little bit about how you would place Tim Scott in the realm of Republican politics. Jeff, kick us off.

I think that Tim Scott, as Meg was saying, is definitely a conservative Republican. That's not necessarily a rare thing these days. So he's mainstream in that sense. I do think that touching on the optimist way he portrays himself –

is certainly in contrast with a lot of the doom and gloom I think you hear from, say, Donald Trump on the campaign trail or the politics of Trumpism has often been sort of like, things are bad, let's make America great again. Whereas thinking back to even Scott's speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention, I remember headlines basically saying things like,

Tim Scott, like the one sort of like bright, optimistic part of an otherwise very sort of like doom and gloom Republican National Convention, at least in terms of describing the state of the country, describing what it faces. So I do think that Scott is in a position, thinking about the Republican primary field, to really maybe contrast himself with

with a tendency to sort of think about what's wrong with the country. And there's certainly things that he thinks are wrong with it. But I think talking about it in a way of improvement and what, in just a happier tone, maybe a happy warrior kind of tone.

Yeah. I mean, I think everyone's right in saying that he is very conservative. If you look at his voting record in the Senate while Trump was in office, he agreed with Trump 90 something percent of the time. A lot. Right. He's not somebody who's, you know, trying to say, oh, I'm, you know, middle of the road. No, he's right wing in his policies. I think this other bit

The tone is important, though, because I think the elephant in the room with respect to the Republican primary is electability, right? It's how is this person not only going to achieve our policy goals, it's how is this person going to win? And so I see sort of the positive, optimistic tone as, you know, partly positive.

I'm sure what he believes and how he thinks about politics, but it's partly a way to contrast himself to these other figures that sound kind of apocalyptic and say, okay, you know, I'm a happy warrior. I think there's something there that's kind of a cousin of the electability argument, if you will.

And you know what? Just to piggyback off of that, when you get out at these events and, you know, I was at his launch. I was at Nikki Haley's launch as well. And you ask voters what they're looking for in terms of, hey, so this is like Donald Trump's third run at the White House. Like, are you looking for like what do you want? You know, he's in the race yet again. A lot of what at least at those events, clearly that's only two snapshots in time.

But, you know, there are a lot of voters who have said they want something different. They want something that feels good and positive and isn't scary and doom and gloom. And, yeah, sure, you know, they would say there are a lot of problems in America. But when I'm thinking about president, at least at this stage in the game, I want somebody who, you know, seems to kind of give me a little bit better energy in a more positive direction.

And so certainly the folks who were there at Tim Scott's event, you know, that's what a lot of them said they were looking for. But I think overall in Republican electorate writ large, there are plenty of folks out there who are like, OK, so we had some of that. Let's, you know, maybe look for a different kind of energy.

Yeah, this brings up a couple questions for me. One is, how much does personal charisma matter in primary politics? You know, watching that announcement speech, you can't deny that he's a charismatic figure who can really get the crowd going. I heard commentators make comparisons to a preacher or something like that. He does a call and response. He brings God into it a lot, and there's a lot of amens.

When we're looking from a data perspective, we're oftentimes talking about, like, how is he piecing together a coalition of evangelicals and moderates? And can he sort of succeed with evangelicals in Iowa and also do well with moderates in New Hampshire? That's important analysis. But how much does the like sort of ineffable, hey, this guy seems like he can really command a crowd aspect matter?

I mean, I think, you know, it depends on who you ask, but certainly at these big scale events, you know, the energy does matter. And when people walk away from like the field house here at Charleston Southern University, when they walk away today, you know, if they're filled with a really good energy and thinking like,

wow, that guy up there, like maybe I don't know a ton about how he feels on X, Y, Z issues, but I feel good after leaving this event. You know, that'll stick with them. I mean, this is South Carolina. You know, something that Tim Scott's team points to a lot is the fact that he was recently reelected in November of 2022 by an overwhelming margin, more than 20 percent.

And so their argument is, look, most Republicans in this state voted for this guy in a big way within the past calendar year. So we think he's still got a lot of support out here. But, you know, even in other places, if he's up in New Hampshire or Iowa where he's going to be traveling later this week and people are walking out of rooms feeling that same kind of vibe, if that sticks with them, that could bode well for him by the time it's, you know, time to vote. But that's still a lot of months from now.

Yeah. And just to point out that he outran, of course, the incumbent Republican governor, Henry McMaster, by about five points. So he's making, you know, that electoral argument is also visible in the results. Jeffrey and David, where do you come down on charisma as political tool?

I mean, I think it's something but not everything, right? We live in a televised age. Donald Trump, you know, had a whole career in entertainment prior to becoming president. And if you're someone who's in Tim Scott's position, right, you're at what, 2% in the polls. You're not super well-known nationally and compared to the frontrunners.

you need to be able to break through. You need to be able to have some kind of moment on some, I don't know what, debate stage or TV program or what have you in order to get people to know you. The first step to supporting you is for them to actually know you. So I think the charisma matters, but it's not everything. Joe Biden, I think it's fair to say, was not the most charismatic Democrat running for president in 2020, and he's president now. So I think it's in between in sort of this era.

I think what is important, and David was getting to this, which is Scott's not that well-known. And so if he's going to get a lot of media attention and become better known, be discovered by the Republican primary electorate to a much greater degree –

Then the fact that he is seen as sort of this charismatic figure who is good on stage, good with an audience could potentially help that. You could have lots of good TV clips of him with a crowd and him being dynamic and that getting covered. So I think in that sense, it is obviously a plus for him.

Yeah. So to this point about Tim Scott's currently polling at about 2%, you know, that's where basically everyone who isn't Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump is currently in the low to mid single digits. According to our polling averages, Ron DeSantis is at about 20%. Donald Trump is at about 50%. So it seems like a long shot for anybody without the last name Trump or DeSantis.

However, David, you wrote a piece in The Washington Post titled Tim Scott is in a better position than you might think. I assume some of that may have to do with the things that we've brought up here. But you did a more sort of rigorous data look at some of the aspects of his campaign. And why are you making that argument?

Right. So I would say that there is definitely a top tier, right? There's Trump and there's DeSantis. They have the lion's share of the support. There's only two front runners. That's them. But if you look at the second tier, I think sort of the fundamentals, so to speak, for Scott are very strong. We have the charisma like we've talked about. We have

He's got 20 million something dollars in the bank. Money equals survival in primaries. So he's going to have the opportunity to stay in the race, to sort of keep his campaign alive, to kind of look for those moments where he can break through if they manifest. He also has a way to differentiate himself from...

from the field. I mean, I'm just thinking through some of these other people, right? Like Asa Hutchinson is like one of these Reagan era random guys that doesn't really know his time is over, right? You have Vivek Ramaswamy, who is yet another sort of rich person who is, you know, making this random run at politics, right? If you think about Tim Scott, he has- Just trashed the field right on you, David. That's kind of what I did in my piece, honestly. Um,

So if you look at him, he has sort of that broad ideological appeal. If he sort of is able to get some airtime, there's not a lot of Republicans who I think would dislike his pitch. He is the lone Black Republican in the Senate and

I think people love cross-cutting figures, right? If you're a Democrat and you have somebody who's a candidate who's from a Republican demographic or Republican, and you have somebody who's from a demographic that typically leans Democratic, I think there's something there where people like to donate or listen to that person. I think that's an advantage in our era. So a lot of the sort of

fundamentals, if you want to call them that, I think are better for Scott than they are for some of the other like two percenters, three percenters, you know, that are in the field. And, you know, when you talk to his campaign, when you talk to Scott's advisors about just that, right, like, hey, the polls aren't so great for your guy right now. One, they're like, there's a long time until people actually vote. But two, they pivot back to the 2016 campaign, pointing out that

At roughly this stage in the race, what the media sphere was talking about was how the entrance of Scott Walker was going to knock Jeb Bush off of his ascendancy to the GOP nomination. Clearly, we know that that didn't happen. And that's, you know, one little example that's kind of cute. But I mean, still, it's a long time until people actually vote. And yeah, Tim Scott has a whole lot of money to start with off the bat. So, you know, we'll see where it goes.

Yeah. So, I mean, one other data point that you pointed out in your piece, David, was his ability to command media attention historically. And it does seem like he is a bit of a darling of the conservative media when there is something to talk about. You know, he's not a divisive figure, so he's not always putting himself out front and center, but he's gotten positive attention surrounding, you know, for example, you already mentioned Jeff Davis.

his 2020 Republican National Convention speech or his response to Joe Biden's first State of the Union address, which was not technically a State of the Union, but whatever, his bipartisan work on police reform after George Floyd's murder. So it seems like he can sort of command the media when he wants to.

I want to come back to this question of a general election pitch and a sort of optimism and getting beyond the arguments of a Republican primary. Listening to his speech today, to me, there was like no doubt in my mind that he's making a general election pitch. He talked a lot about, you know, we like public opinion here, issues where the Republican Party is on the majority side of public opinion.

And tried to, you know, stay away from some of the more divisive things or things where Republicans are not on the majority side of public opinion. Like abortion came up, but it was no specifics. It was like, we're pro-life. We want to support, you know, innocent life, et cetera, et cetera. And it was much more specific about like the American dream, which, although there may be liberal skeptics, is like polls extremely well today in America.

So my question, though, is when you look at the polls, Republicans are the opposite of Democrats in 2020, which is when you ask Democrats in 2020, what's your priority? Somebody who is top to bottom in line with your policy positions or someone who can just beat Donald Trump?

Democrat majority of Democrats said time and time again, someone who can beat Donald Trump, the same polls right now of Republican primary voters. Republicans are saying our priority is somebody who top to bottom. We agree with their policy positions. Is that just a difference between the two parties? Is that where we are in the race? Like what if like Republican voters are just not motivated by the same things as Democratic voters? And then this this sort of general election electability thing is besides the point.

Yeah, Galen, I think it's sort of hard to say in the sense that I'm not sure that – so it's easy to get into this dichotomy of electability versus issues. But I do kind of wonder if Tim Scott can make general election pitches while also being like, I agree with you on all these things.

But donors will like to hear that he's thinking about the general election and winning. And then if they're looking for someone, especially if DeSantis struggles and they're looking for an alternative to Trump because they worry about Trump in the general election –

Tim Scott's pitch might be just what the doctor ordered and they'll want to donate to him, which will then, to David's earlier point, be able to strengthen his campaign, allow his campaign to go on deep into this campaign season. So I don't know. I've been thinking a bit about the selectability versus issues question. And it's hard because you were asking if there's a clear difference between the parties. And I think it's kind of hard to say. I've looked at some of the data pre-2020 and

on this and it's kind of a mixed bag as to which party sort of, or if, like, if there was like a clear difference between like Republicans saying they prioritized one thing and Democrats another and the polling can definitely shift,

over the course of the campaign on this. And that may also have to do with which candidates are front and center, who are doing well. I mean, I remember, it's kind of a related example. I remember early in the 2016 campaign, so in 2015, I think there was an early Pew Research Center poll that asked Republicans if they preferred someone with experience or an outsider. And at that point, more Republicans said they preferred someone with experience. But as Trump rose in the polls...

The next time Pew asked that question, Republicans said they preferred an outsider. So I think these things are – it's not like – it's not one-direction causality here. Things are interacting with one another. So that also kind of complicates I think knowing just how to sort of place Democrats versus Republicans on like electability. Yeah.

I think it's also somewhat reflective of kind of the past couple of presidential cycles where Republicans have been. You know, like, as you were just pointing out, like 2016, it kind of like swung from like, yeah, we want this thing to, oh, yeah, now I think we want this thing. And then 2020, there's an incumbent running that's a little different. And then now here we are in 2024. And I mean, we've all

written and read and seen a multitude of stories about the reckoning within the GOP and like, where are they and how do people feel? And there's all this division. And, you know, we saw that frankly, when Kevin McCarthy became speaker of the US House and like how long, you know, that kind of played out.

And so I think when you ask Republicans those questions these days, I mean, there's a variety of opinion. And frankly, they're all trying to kind of like figure out where they are, because on one hand, there are some voters who would say, yeah, the economy, at least for me personally, was doing pretty well during the Trump administration. So I can't really quibble with that. But man, I wish he had a different tone. I have heard that over and over and over again from Republicans throughout this state, you know, as I report on the campaign for former President Donald Trump and the other candidates.

You know, so, yeah, we're going to see a bunch of different things, I think, coming out of Republican voters mouths in terms of what they really want. But the fact that they're questioning what they want shows that, you know, there are a lot of candidates who continue to get into this race. And, you know, we'll see how it shakes out. But the fact that, you know, they're going to have a lot of options and seem to be responding at least to some of them, you know, shows that continuing debate.

Yeah, nobody wants to lose forever, right? Like Republicans have sort of, you know, followed their heart in 2022 and nominated a bunch of really terrible candidates. Trump lost in 2020. And I think when you have a system like ours, one sort of emergent property of it is that if a party loses a lot, eventually they find a way to nominate more electable candidates. So I think the electability pitch is a smart one to make.

I don't know if it's going to work because like we've all said, Tim Scott's at 2%. But, you know, sort of eventually down the line, I don't think any party sort of, you know, consents to lose and lose and lose and never pick the electability candidate. It's just a question of when. Yeah, that's an interesting point. You know, one question in all of this is when you look at the polls and

There are different ways of polling the field. And one of them is just ask voters, who do you plan on voting for in the Republican primary? And when you make it open-ended and don't give them any options, there's a lot of people who just say, I don't really know. Like even people who are sort of screened to be a likely Republican voter are

aren't automatically saying Donald Trump or what have you. So a big piece of the question is going to be to what extent does Trump blot out the sun so that other people don't have the opportunity to like work their way up the polls? Maybe we don't have an answer to that question now, but does it seem like we're going to have a 2016 redux where there's a lot of minor characters and

And it seems increasingly like, you know, as I said, DeSantis is going to get in. Chris Christie has teased that he's going to be getting in soon, like the governor of North Dakota is getting in. I mean, people who voters have never heard of. How does this seem to be taking shape from that perspective in terms of the opportunities for a non-Trump candidate to make their pitch even?

I mean, I think that if you just talk to voters and ask them, hey, what do you feel about the size of the field? They're glad there are some options. But at least some have told me that they are concerned that there are going to be too many to perhaps do exactly as you know, to let somebody else have the opportunity to really rise above Donald Trump and to take him on directly. In states like South Carolina, which Donald Trump won handily,

handily with just over 30%, but in 2016 in a big field, that was all it took. But has been supported really strongly ever since then and has maintained popularity. There's a lot of support for him here still, but I have found the voter out there

that backed him a couple of times and is now like, you know, I really would like something else. And I'm open to shopping and I'm waiting to hear who that's going to be. We have seen some potential candidates like Larry Hogan, the former governor of Maryland, say, you know what, this field is there's enough options now. I'm going to sit this one out.

And I think a couple of months back when he made that decision, you know, people were like, oh, okay, so things are starting to kind of congeal. And then now here we are with multiple people potentially getting in in one week. So, you know, if 2016 taught us anything, it's expect the unexpected. And it feels like, you know, a couple of years later, here we are yet again, getting ready to deal with what could be a pretty big field. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. I wonder if the national media has...

grown some different muscles sort of between now and eight years ago. I remember 2016 was the, you know, first campaign I covered end to end as a working journalist. And I just remember every time the news cycle would move away from Trump, he would just say something wild. And the headline would just be sort of like this,

awestruck like or gobsmacked like tone like could a political candidate even say this but like trump's been saying all the trump stuff for like eight years now everyone knows that he's going to say controversial things i you know you never know how it's going to go exactly ahead of time but i wouldn't be surprised if the news cycle plays out differently because trump's been doing his shtick for years now we're all kind of used to it at this point

Yeah, and just to add to that, I do think there are going to be some interesting strategic decisions that involve Trump. He's already sort of

raise the prospect that he might skip some of the early Republican debates or even all of them, like who knows? And you actually wonder if that's a wise decision in the sense that it could give an opportunity to one of his opponents to maybe grab a headline and have a banner night. And then that person gets to benefit from a deluge of media coverage and gets a ton of attention. Whereas Trump, as the frontrunner, even if he's taking shots on the stage, he's

It's not clear to me that other Republican candidates are really that primed to attack him or at least – it's obviously still very early, so I don't want to say that that's like a permanent feature of this. But that's like an open question. Like can someone sort of find like a Goldilocks – like attack Trump without like alienating people who like Trump?

And so far, it's not clear to me who's going to do that or be able to do that. So I do think it's gonna be interesting to see what Trump chooses to do and whether that presents opportunities for some of his opponents.

Well, it seems like we're on the topic of Tim Scott. I mean, Tim Scott did not mention Donald Trump by name at all during his announcement speech. It seems like he, I don't, I have no idea if this will work, but it seems like his strategy is going to be don't talk about Donald Trump really at all and let DeSantis or Chris Christie or whoever, Asa Hutchinson, do those battles and sort of be above the fray and

We're going to find out whether or not that works. However, speaking of some of the other candidates like Ron DeSantis and Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis is planning on getting in either Wednesday or Thursday. We're going to have a whole podcast dedicated to that day. So we're going to save some of our analysis for then. But I am curious about Chris Christie. Like,

What's Chris Christie doing? What are some of these other minor candidates doing getting into the race who I should say, again, like, yes, Tim Scott's only pulling at 2%, but he has, you know, already Senate Republicans, two Senate Republicans endorsing him, one of whom is Senator Thune, who is the second most powerful senator in the Republican caucus. And, you know,

And he's got real like donors behind him. It's, you know, a timid showing in the polls, but it's not a timid showing in terms of sort of elite and establishment support, which we'll find out whether or not that matters. But then other people, it's like Chris Christie doesn't even have that. What is the calculus here? Like, are they getting into just go to war with Trump so other people don't have to?

I mean, that's my like personal pet theory or something like that. But what's going on? I mean, that is very possible. You know, we've heard from Tim Scott's campaign that he doesn't intend to punch first. He won't hesitate to punch back if he gets punched, but he's not going to be the first one out there, you know, criticizing other candidates outwardly.

Again, it is early. That could change. I don't know. But that would be pretty on brand for a guy who has generally tried to be a positive force for good and spent his whole launch event talking about optimism and compassion. So, you know, from him, certainly, I don't think that we're going to be seeing that. But that is a question. You know, when you see a persona like Chris Christie, who we've seen on the national stage before, unafraid.

to say whatever he wants to say, to say quiet parts out loud on debate stages all over the place. You know, that's that's certainly something that we could be seeing yet again. And, you know, perhaps I don't know. I haven't spoken to him, but perhaps from his perspective, that's something that's missing right now. Again, you know, Ron DeSantis yet to be seen exactly how he plans to campaign as a actual candidate.

against Donald Trump. Maybe there'll be some more tenor in that regard, but maybe that's something that Chris Christie thinks is lacking now and that the American people want to see or need to hear. - What does Chris Christie want? I don't know, man. Speaking fees, more time on cable news.

alleviate his own boredom. I have no idea. Some of these people, I don't really understand it. Other than that, if they think there's like a 0.1% chance they could be president, they're going to run. I think that's the case sometimes.

Yeah, but in terms of the punching back question, I do think that's important. We're very early, but somebody has to find an angle in to criticize Trump. He's at, what, 50% in the 538 average? Am I remembering that right? 53% today, yeah. Yeah, if it...

If no other candidate feels that they can criticize him, then it's already over, right? If he's at 53% and he can't be criticized, then what's happening in this primary, right? Someone has to find a way in at some point. But yeah, I don't know what that looks like, especially since such a large chunk of the Republican electorate believes he won the 2020 election. That's one of the biggest sort of knocks against Trump, I guess, out the door for a lot of voters. Yeah, I mean, it wouldn't shock me if Chris Christie...

is in particular, in his case, thinking about sort of being a scorched earth, save the Republican Party kind of campaign. Like that would not shock me. You know, Chris Christie and-

breaking, is not going to win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. I'm just going to go ahead and put myself out there on that, I would assume, very sturdy limb, a sturdy branch, and put that out there. So if he's running for president, I assume that he's thinking about this in some larger terms. And I actually think that it's possible even that some of the other candidates who are pondering running, like we're expecting former Vice President Mike Pence to run.

Given Pence's relationship with Trump and the way Trump has sort of cast him as the villain in the 2020 law story to some extent, or at least a villain for not basically breaking the law and inserting himself into the electoral college certification process. Is Pence going to be able to win the Republican nomination? Probably not. But is he thinking about running to try to offer some alternative, even perhaps criticize Trump to some extent?

So some of them, I kind of wonder if they're just being – like they want to run, but they're also being somewhat realistic about what their reasons are. Others I could see are just sort of like, well, I've been governor for almost eight years or what have you, and maybe I should try running for president. Like Doug Burgum, he's the governor of North Dakota. He's very wealthy, has a lot of personal wealth. He could throw a race if he wanted to, see if he could maybe catch fire.

Um, Chris Sununu, he's like, I'm governor of an early state. So maybe I should try to take advantage of that, uh, you know, that spotlight, uh, in some way and, and offer a different vision for the GOP, sort of a center right vision. You know, I, I don't think I, that Sununu would have a great chance, but at the, at the same time, he is governor of New Hampshire. New Hampshire is a key early state. Yeah.

All right, folks, I think we have landed at the natural point in every 538 Politics podcast where we say, who knows? So we're going to leave it there for now. David and Meg, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. Yeah, thank you. Thanks, Galen. Jeff, stick around. We're going to talk about the debt ceiling.

Debt ceiling negotiations between Biden and McCarthy began again on Monday, weeks or maybe just days before the federal government runs out of cash. House Republicans have already passed a debt ceiling bill that would also cut discretionary spending significantly. That bill is dead on arrival for Democrats who have long suggested raising the debt ceiling should not be conditioned on cutting government spending.

So where will things go from here? Also joining us now is senior elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich. Hey, Nathaniel, how's it going? Happy Monday. Hey, Galen. Thank you. Happy Monday. Thanks for having me on here. Fun fact for listeners, this is actually the first segment of the podcast to record, but the second that you're listening to. So I come to you from the future.

Wow. Wow. It's truly incredible what you can do with a little bit of audio editing and some willpower on a Monday morning. Jokes aside, Nathaniel, what are the specifics of what each side is asking for beyond just, you know, Republicans want cuts, Democrats don't want cuts?

Yeah, so Republicans are looking to basically freeze spending at old levels, basically across the board, which would obviously kind of reflect a cut in real world terms. They're looking, I believe, at freezing spending at 2022 levels. So that would be, you know, that's an older number. And then also, obviously, there's inflation that would kind of naturally require if you were to kind of keep up with the true value of things, you would have to increase the budgets.

And then they're also asking for things like work requirements on government assistance programs, things like food stamps and things like that. And of course, on Biden's side, he's basically saying, you know, clean, clean debt limit. That's that's kind of his starting position, although it's clear, I think, by the nature of these negotiations that he is willing to accept something short of that.

Yeah. Is it clear where those compromises might lie at this point? The messages that we've heard from both sides are like, oh, it's looking kind of optimistic. Oh, it's not looking optimistic at all. But we haven't actually heard what folks are optimistic or pessimistic about, I don't think.

Yeah, so there was a report on Friday afternoon. And like, frankly, I think part of the kind of the broader point here is what you said, Galen, is that like these negotiations are like so hot and cold. Like it's literally like, you know, in the afternoon, there's a report that like they broke off talks and like, oh, isn't that a terrible sign? And then in the evening, it's like, oh, they're getting back together. I feel like we're going to go through this cycle like a million times between now and, you know, whenever they come to an agreement, if they come to an agreement or, you know, whenever the X date is.

But yeah, so the report that I saw on Friday afternoon said that they were actually very – the farthest apart on the spending numbers, which is interesting, but that Republicans did think that there were – there was some more common ground to find spending.

like COVID aid permitting reform, which are some of the kind of more minor points. I think the things that you're hearing less about in the news probably are the things that are less likely to be stumbling blocks. The work requirements is interesting too, because I think there's a lot of pressure on Biden from the left to not give into those. But it seems from kind of reading between the lines of some of these reports where Republicans, so in this report from Axios, a Republican negotiator said the work requirements were, quote, not as big a flashpoint

as the spending issue. So it seems like maybe if Republicans think that there might be a deal to be worked out there, then maybe Biden will give in on that. Well, it's interesting because I was digging through some of the polling on, throughout all of this, what do Americans want? Because Biden can say his thing and McCarthy can say his thing, but is either side

with majority of public opinion here. And what it looked like to me is a majority of Democrats, Democrats, not just Americans, want spending cuts to accompany a raise of the debt ceiling. And that half of Democrats support work requirements for federal aid like SNAP.

So you said that progressives are pushing him from the left, but is he in a tricky position here in that it seems like not even just the American public, but Democrats specifically are open to some of the points that McCarthy is making, Jeffrey? With this kind of thing, I think there's a couple of thoughts. One is that on polling questions like,

Should there be work requirements? You're going to tend to see the public say yes, and that's true sort of across the board regardless of partisanship. And in this case, you have a poll that shows that half of Democrats think that work requirements should be included.

So like that's not like terribly shocking to me. I do think that that's helpful for Republicans because anytime you have an issue where one side is very unified – so in this case on the question of work requirements, most Republicans say yes, they should be included and the other side is divided –

with Democrats split on the issue, that tends to be useful for, in this case, Republicans. That's the sweet spot in politics. Yes. That's what you really want is finding – I mean, as a point of contrast, like on Ukraine, Democrats have been more unified about how to deal with the Ukraine situation, whereas Republicans have been more divided. So like that, just to present sort of a contrast. But I do think that on any of these questions –

when it comes to polling. And this is, obviously, we like polls. We view them as very helpful. But we also love polling skepticism. Well, yes. And I think on an issue like this, where you're going to see poll after poll saying that people generally think, like, maybe the government spends too much, or that maybe, like, they should cut spending, especially in the aftermath of all the spending we saw early on in Biden's term.

But if you actually ask people specifically about what programs they want to cut, they tend to oppose that. So like the moment you get into specifics, things go the other way. And I think that just is sort of a, that's just been a long held, like sort of fact in public opinion.

I think there's also a really important part of this is the salience of the issue, right? So you can say in a poll that like half of Democrats support these things, but like, do they really care about it? Right. And like, I think that the progressives who oppose them really care about it and they're going to be pressuring Biden. But like, you know, how high of a priority is it for those 50% of Democrats to cut spending or to, um,

To impose work requirements are they going to be really pissed at Biden if he doesn't do those things? I don't think so And I think that's a dimension that's that's missing from that poll and so in terms of his Biden in a tricky position I don't think not really I don't think that like half the Democratic base is gonna Blame him and be upset with him if he doesn't cut spending as a result of this So I think that the pressure is largely from the left well

So you think he's more liable to side with the left on issues like this? Because to me, it seems like actually Biden is more liable to say, OK, we will agree to some spending cuts. We will agree to even perhaps some work requirements. I think that's where it's headed, which means that he is just going to sort of be at conflict with the left flank if that's where things end up.

Yeah, I agree, but I don't think he's necessarily doing that for political interests. Or maybe he is doing it, but I don't think he's doing it to appeal to the 50% of Democrats who think that. Maybe he's doing it for independence, right? Or just because it might be the only option. Right, exactly. I think that's what it is. The reality is you've got one-third of the government that's controlled by Republicans, and he's going to have to deal with them and make some concessions to that. Unless the 14th Amendment, which maybe we'll talk about later.

I do want to bring up the 14th Amendment. Thank you for teasing it. But I want to reflect for a moment here that when this whole debate began, say it started with the State of the Union address, the opening message was Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare.

And in the House that night, Republicans said, no, that's a lie. Essentially, we don't want to do that. And so the debate has moved on. You know, like in 2011, this debate included Social Security and Medicare. Now it doesn't. Now it's a conversation about work requirements and just sort of cutting discretionary spending across the board, which it seems like.

Oh.

Oh, I think that's absolutely true. I mean, and that reflects what we're seeing even in like the Republican presidential primary race. I mean, you have Donald Trump's campaign or his allies, I should say, his allied super PAC running ads, attacking Ron DeSantis for having, when he was in Congress, uh, during sort of the more Tea Party, Paul Ryan years, having backed legislation that would have potentially raised the retirement age or, or cut certain entitlement spendings for social security and Medicare. And, you know, that,

DeSantis and some of his allies have said that's like a democratic attack, right? But I think that just sort of reflects what's happened with the Republican Party. It's no longer really the party of spending cuts. I know that that's like an angle of what's happening here and the overall negotiations for the debt ceiling. But let's just say that it's not necessarily the small government party anymore in the way that maybe it was in the past. Right, in the sense that the cuts that they're proposing...

are only to discretionary spending, which does not include Social Security and Medicare. Although things do get a little tricky, Nathaniel, as you already mentioned, as soon as you get into the details. So according to New York Times reporting, if the discretionary spending cuts that they passed in their original House bill were to actually be enacted, and they were not specific about what exactly should be cut, they just said, you know, we're going to make this level of spending 2022 the standard going forward. And

According to New York Times reporting, if you cut across the board, which would include defense spending and spending on veterans, there would be an 18 percent cut across the board. And so Biden sort of pounced on this and Democrats pounced on this and said, hey, Republicans, because they want to cut discretionary spending, want to cut veterans.

You know, the defense budget and more importantly, for Democratic messaging, spending on veterans. And then Republicans said, no, no, no, no, no. We don't want to do those things. Those things are safe, even though in the bill it doesn't say that. But if you don't cut spending at all for the military or veterans, then it ends up being a 51 percent cut to all other discretionary spending.

So is that also a position that will ultimately be difficult for McCarthy to maintain? Like, where does it look like his vulnerabilities are on this question? Yeah, I mean, I think that that, you know, either of those things would be unpopular, right? Well, actually, a fair number of Americans think that defense spending should be cut, but not the Republican Party. Right, exactly. Exactly.

So, you know, he's got that choice or, you know, these very deep cuts to other popular programs. Yeah. I mean, but like, he's also, he's in a very tough spot in general just because he's got this, you know, what like very narrow majority in the house, like seven seats these days have lost track because of, uh,

I guess there are no vacancies anymore. So I guess eight seats. Anyway, it's some very small number. And so, yeah, I mean, he's going to have to, I think, cut less than, you know, their original, you know, position was this bill that they got through the House knowing that it would not pass the Senate or get signed by Biden. But like our

you know, I'm sure you could scrounge up five Republicans who think that that's unacceptable. And are they going to go for a, you know, a more moderate compromise? Is McCarthy's speakership in danger? Because remember, as a result of getting elected in the first place, going on 15 ballots or whatever it was, he had to change the rules so that there could be a motion to vacate the chair, the speakership, um,

with just one person proposing that. Of course, he would still need to be voted out, but one person could prompt a vote in order to, or like basically a vote of no confidence. So yeah, he's in a very tricky position too. And I think that's, you know, all these things are kind of part of why people seem more skeptical that a deal will even be reached, period, than they have been in previous showdowns like this. Yeah. I mean,

What are the options here, in a sense, from a vote counting perspective in the House? Right. Like a few Democrats could join Republicans to make up for conservatives who want deeper cuts or a few Republicans could join Democrats to, you know, whatever. That's probably not going to happen because McCarthy isn't going to have the House vote on something that only like 10 Republicans want.

But do you think we end up seeing a final bill that includes Democratic support? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, how this happens without that. In fact, Biden has to sign the bill. So like if I was going to sign it, I think a good number of Democrats would vote for it. Yeah. So like, oh, I mean, I mean, I could imagine a situation where you get you get like, I don't know, one hundred and.

120 Republicans to vote for it and 100 Democrats. And the more right of the Republican caucus votes against it and the more left of the Democratic caucus votes against it. And that seems like a perfectly reasonable expectation for how this pans out because you usually see at least when Republicans have controlled

at least one part of Congress and Democrats control the presidency, you usually sort of see this sort of thing happen to varying degrees. In fact, a lot of times in the Obama era, Democrats were doing most of the work, even when Republicans controlled Congress to pass it. So, you know, it's in Democrats' interest to avoid Biden getting into some sort of gigantic default mess. So they are going to probably give in on some things. It's just a question of what actually ends up being in the package.

Yeah. So there's this thing called the Hastert rule, which isn't a real rule, but it's basically the notion that like the speaker will only schedule a vote if it has majority support within his own party or her own party. Um,

And but like in the past, this rule has been broken. John Boehner broke it in order to raise the debt ceiling before. And that seems to me I'm I'm not an expert in congressional machinations, to be clear. But like that seems to me like the most obvious way that this gets solved legislatively is that, you know, kind of the scenario that Jeffrey said. And you have like maybe a majority of Republicans vote against the bill. But McCarthy is able to pass it with Democratic support. And then it becomes a question of can McCarthy hold on to the speakership? Can they?

kind of have a situation where it's like a little dance where the Republicans are voting against it on principle, but they like understand that like it's going to pass and they're like secretly kind of okay with it? Or are they like genuinely going to be pissed about it and like enough to try to take down McCarthy? So you don't think we reach a scenario where it has majority Republican support and still gets, say like, you know, a hundred or so Democratic votes? Oh yeah, that could happen. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

I think that, but to Nathaniel's point earlier, sorry, you know, when I talked to some experts about this earlier this year with the outlook for a potential clash, obviously over the debt ceiling, there's definitely a concept known as vote no, hope yes. And so you could definitely see a fair amount of that and just maybe it's one side doing it the other, just because no one's going to actually want, going to want the default because that would just be,

you know, uncharted territory and who knows what sort of ramifications that would hold. I mean, that's many, many people have suggested what those would be, but no one really knows with absolute certainty. Yeah. God bless American politics. Vote no, hope yes. To your point about the default or possible default, do we know about when that would be, what it would look like and how voters would react to something like that?

So I haven't seen any more detailed calculations of the date. Janet Yellen has said it could be as early as June 1st. The Congressional Budget Office was saying sometime in the first two weeks of June. So I feel like that's the neighborhood. I feel like nobody really thinks it's going to be June 1st, which I think is maybe part of the problem with these negotiations is that it's like this like soft deadline that people are going to have to wait.

people think they can kind of, you know, push past. It's like when, you know, when I say to, you know, somebody like, hey, like, you know, like, let's write this article by Wednesday. And, you know, everybody knows that, like, hey, like, you know, yeah, we can probably finish it on Thursday and it's not a big deal. We can still publish by Monday. Name names, Nathaniel. Name names.

I am honestly I am as guilty. I'm probably the biggest like perpetrator of this in the 538 newsroom. So I'm sorry to everybody else. But anyway, yeah. So in terms of what would happen in a default, it is uncharted territory. As Jeffrey said, it seems like, you know, the the

markets would react badly at first. But it also does seem like the length of the default would matter. We could go into default and people would freak out. But if it is solved relatively quickly, maybe the fact that people are freaking out really lights a fire under the negotiators, then it's possible that this could be kind of more of just like a scary little bump

But you know in kind of the worst case scenarios where we default for a long time I've seen projections of like I think was like seven or eight million people losing their jobs like a really deep recession and and obviously that would you know have horrible impacts for the US economy and also I think we're downed on the Politics and you know that kind of recession would probably linger long enough to impact the 2024 election Okay, so

That's one possibility. Progressives have been arguing that there is a sort of lever that Biden can pull, an escape hatch to skirt this issue altogether, which is,

Using the 14th Amendment to claim that the debt ceiling itself is unconstitutional. Biden has suggested that he may agree with them, but doesn't think there's time for it to actually play out. Where does that leave us, Nathaniel, in terms of how the 14th Amendment might be used in this scenario? Yeah.

Yeah, I think this is really fascinating on a number of different levels. I think, you know, it remains unlikely, but the fact that it is being talked about seriously, right? Like, you know, in the past, we talked about the debt ceilings, we talked about the trillion dollar coin and stuff like that. But like nobody, like, you know, Obama wasn't like seriously talking about that as an option, right? But

But Biden now is, you know, he is saying like, you know, yeah, like, you know, it's not my favorite thing to do, but like it is there as an option. And for people who don't know, which, you know, I didn't know until a couple of weeks ago, the 14th Amendment says in part that the public debt of the United States shall not be questioned. And so the idea here is that the debt ceiling's very existence is unconstitutional and that Biden can just like ignore it.

Um, and, and so, yeah, so I think it's really interesting just in terms of like, it shows how difficult of a needle this is to thread and how like both parties have really dug in more, like even versus like 2011, which was a very acrimonious debt ceiling, uh,

like negotiation. Right. But like in that case, like Obama made concessions to Republicans that amounted to some pretty deep spending cuts. And like, it's clear that Biden is not willing to go there this time. Like he's much more dug in on his position. And then for Republicans position, like, you know, they, you know, they're still obviously, you know, very insistent on spending, but honestly, even if they weren't like, just like the narrowness of McCarthy's majority, I think makes it very hard mathematically for them to pass anything. So like, I think it,

it goes to show that like the default is a, is a serious concern. And then of course, I think the main question with the event of the 14th amendment is would it pass muster with the Supreme court? On one hand, obviously it's a very conservative Supreme court. They have been very skeptical of Biden taking unilateral actions. On the other hand, like Biden,

We've already talked about this, how the Supreme Court is potentially facing a legitimacy crisis, and they're very unpopular in the wake of some of these decisions they've made lately, such as the Dobbs decision. Making a decision that would perhaps throw the country into default would be very bad, I think, for the court's institutionalism. And so I could see someone like

Chief Justice Roberts kind of, you know, like holding his nose and and voting to uphold that if that's what it takes to kind of keep the economy afloat. I think also some of the kind of the more conservative justices on the court

are probably more, you know, they're less Tea Party-ish and they're more of, you know, Chamber of Commerce Republicans. And so maybe they're more, you know, sensitive to, you know, the concerns of, you know, businesses and the economy. So I don't think it would be a slam dunk. But yeah, but I think, you know, it does seem like unlikely. But I also feel like it's the kind of thing where, like, if it turns out that the X date is June 1st and there's no agreement by then,

But like rather than just let the nation slide into default, I feel like Biden might be like at least try to take his chances. Right. With the 14th Amendment. Yeah. You know, it seems to me that it's it's probably largely a negotiating tactic at this point. I mean, if you hold out that you might pull this more extreme lever, maybe that gets Republicans to agree to less because they just don't want to go down that path either. Right.

And at the same time, sort of getting to what Nathaniel was saying, like, I mean, section four reads the validity of the public debt of the United States, dot, dot, dot. If you skip some of the other things it says, it shall not be questioned. So like, you know, those textualists, originalists on the Supreme Court, I mean, you know, it says what it says. I'm not saying that they would actually rule in favor of Biden's stance on this. In fact, I'd be kind of skeptical that they would. But nonetheless, I think there is reason to

That would be an interesting discussion. But at the same time, you'd also have chaos because the markets would have no confidence in the public debt of the United States and there would be just – I don't think that's actually something that Biden really wants to do and I think he is largely focusing on this from a negotiating standpoint of just trying to put more pressure on Republicans. Yeah.

My name is Galen Druk. Tony Chow is in the control room and on video editing. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet 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 will see you soon.

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