S4 Ep40: Derangement vs. Impairment (with Tim Miller) 58:09

COVID-19 viruses like me change to fool your immune system and make you sick, but updated vaccines help protect you. Stay up to date on COVID-19 and flu vaccinations sponsored by Champions for Vaccine Education, Equity and Progress. Part of what I never understand is that people who believe, as I believe, that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy don't look in the mirror and say, am I the best person to do this?

And maybe you don't get to their heights without looking in the mirror and having that answer always be yes. But I would say, no, if there's somebody better who can do this, who can win, like, let's talk about what that looks like. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark. And this week, we're going to have a hard conversation about where the anti-Trump coalition goes from here.

Because there is no sugarcoating it, friends. Joe Biden's debate performance was really bad. It's been clear to longtime listeners of this podcast that voters are not convinced Biden is up to being president until he's 86 years old. And that was painfully on display in the debate and in our focus groups afterward. However, these same voters who universally panned Biden's performance still believed Donald Trump was a liar.

and a narcissist and a psychopath. Even though his debate performance was more quote unquote normal than usual, Trump's manifest liabilities make him eminently beatable. The question is whether Joe Biden is the best candidate to do that. And democracy is too important and the threat Trump poses too extreme to not have an honest conversation about how voters are thinking about the election after last week's debate.

So while I don't want this show to be a gratuitous pile on, I do want us to honestly and unflinchingly consider the current landscape.

So to do this, I welcome back truth teller and my good friend Tim Miller, host of the Daily Bulwark podcast. Timmy, thanks for being here. Hey, Sarah. Yeah, you know, being honest is tough. It's fine. It's fine. We're all good. It's just it's just some mean tweets, right? Just some mean tweets. That's what I said about Donald Trump. That's true in this case.

Getting some mean tweets at you is not a big deal. The Donald Trump thread is more than mean tweets. And I think this podcast might yield some mean tweets from people. But it was a fascinating focus group. I was enraptured. Well, you know, you've spent the last few days, right, taking some hits on Twitter for talking about how you're not sure Biden should remain in the race, right? That's why you're getting the mean tweets. Yes.

So has your thinking evolved in the last few days and did the focus groups do anything to shift your mindset? The focus groups reinforced what I've always thought. It's nice when you're like, you think you're going crazy and you're looking around and you're like, am I going crazy or is what I'm seeing totally untenable? And is everyone circling the wagons the ones losing their mind? Like who's the crazy one here?

And so it's nice to hear from real folk out there across the swing states and listening to the focus groups just reinforce my thoughts. Frankly, I would say the people in the groups were, if anything, even more critical of the president than I was. I mean, it was really striking.

Yeah. These are not people who feel the need to sort of preface their criticisms with Joe Biden has been a great president. He saved democracy in 2020. They're just like, what is happening? I am so alarmed and afraid. And we're going to get into that. I do just want to say for the listeners. So here's what we did.

After Thursday's debate, we did two groups on Friday that we had previously set to convene. And then we did another two kind of emergency groups on Sunday. So we have four different groups worth of sound here because I wanted to cover the landscape. I didn't want to come out with just one group and try to extrapolate too much from that. And so we do have four different groups. Now, here are the groups that you're going to hear from today. There are

Two time Trump voters, but who are down on Trump. So this is a group that we've done before on the podcast that I like very much because they are part of our kind of persuadable universe in the work that I do with Republican voters against Trump. These are people who voted for Trump twice, but usually unhappily so. And after January 6th, we're really done with him.

And then there are two groups, another favorite of the show, two groups of Trump to Biden voters. So they voted for Trump in 16. They voted for Biden in 2020. We often call them flippers on the show, but they are your swing voters. They are part of the coalition that Biden needs to hold if he's going to win this election. So we did two of those groups. And then we did one group of Clinton voters.

Biden voters, but who now say they are undecided in the 2024 race. This is part of the Democratic coalition who isn't sure they can show up for Biden. Okay. So I want to start though, just a level set with how voters have talked about Biden's age over the last year, because this debate as

as we're going to hear, was not an isolated incident that people will easily brush aside. Right. This has been coming up in the groups. The age thing has been the perennial sticking issue for Joe Biden with a lot of these persuadable groups. And so let's hear a sample of what Trump to Biden voters told us over the second half of 2023. This is a year ago before this stuff happened.

It almost seems like he's being controlled by other people in the party, telling them what to say, like he has handlers. I mean, at least that's the way it comes across. He doesn't seem to be all there. And I don't necessarily want someone like that running the country. I mean, I definitely don't want Trump running the country either. I think they're both bad for different reasons. One is barely there and one is just a little unhinged. When my grandmother was pushing 80, we were not sure if she should have the ability to drive anymore.

And we're letting people run our country. And that's terrifying. I don't really care how old somebody is, if they're all there and they look strong. Biden doesn't look strong. He looks like he could fall over at any minute. And that's concerning to me.

That's just like a little snippet, but let me just you can take it from me or people who listen to the show that that kind that range of commentary is constant. The Joe Biden's being controlled by other people. He's got people behind him pulling the strings here that all the time. You hear a lot of people referencing other older people that they know shouldn't be in a position to run the country. And then the.

other thing that you hear a lot is like that it's not age, it's like acuity and that, you know, somebody who's 90, if they're super sharp, people are OK. It's not age is just a number. But they're like, but this guy doesn't seem like people don't buy the whole, well, Trump's just a few years younger because they just think they seem completely different. So, Tim, you and I, you came on the show and we did Trump to Biden voters after the State of the Union.

which was March. And they were very reassured, as I think we were somewhat reassured after that performance. They talked about how it showed Biden could go off script and people reminded themselves that he'd have a strong team around him and a much stronger team than Trump in the second term. Do you think it's possible after that debate to salvage that attitude with some of these voters? Well,

I don't. And I think this is a fundamental problem. And I've been giving you and these focus groups credit and all the views have been doing on this because here's the thing. I think it's important for everybody to remember the context that we are in of this debate, especially the folks that are just like it was just 90 minutes and it was just one night. The entire reason the debate happened in June was because the Biden campaign knew these concerns existed, right? We all knew they did, not everybody.

at the New York Times or in the pundit class, but among real voters, the key voters they need, swing voters, members of their own coalition, people that aren't really swing voters. They're deciding whether or not they're voting for Biden or not going to show up at all. And so that was a consistent refrain on this podcast, was a consistent refrain if you talk to regular voters. And so the Biden team, their strategy for dealing with that was, let's have an early debate

Let's give him a week at Camp David to prepare for it. You know, let's assuage concerns with a strong performance, just like he did at the State of the Union. Let's remind voters how crazy Donald Trump is and focus their minds. And then what we'll see is this group, these key groups of people that should be Biden voters that have their doubts about mostly age, maybe inflation.

They'll come home and then we'll see the numbers move and then we'll be in a position for victory. That was their strategy and it totally collapsed. And so that's why it isn't a 90 minute problem. That's why it's a full campaign problem. And boy, when you listen to these voters, I wouldn't say I don't want to say that it's impossible to win them back. I don't think that's true. But this is going to linger and there needs to be a lot of work to to reassure them.

And let me just add, it's not just about it lingering. Well, so two things. Number one, the early debate was actually precipitated by a New York Times Siena poll that was pretty devastating. Right. And we've had a series of these where Biden is just not catching up in these swing states. And so there's a poll that comes out. There's a round of panic. And so they announced we're going to have the debate. And I think for for me, I was like, yes, exactly. This is what needs to happen. Right.

But he was already behind. And I think this is like a key piece of context for people who are comparing it to different Reagan or Obama. Like this is a person whose central, most fundamental liability needed to be overcome.

Because in order for him to pick up some momentum in the polls where he had been sort of very concerningly lagging for some time, he had to put in a good performance. And he read that's not not only the knockout, it was a catastrophic performance. It reinforced people's central concern about him. And I think you needed every time Biden showed up in a big way, it had to be the State of the Union every time.

And so you can't, in my opinion, recover easily from this with these voters. And I know that because I listen to them all the time. I think every day about how we're going to bring these voters on side, these double haters. And I knew that the number one thing

They didn't hate Joe Biden, the double haters. They just thought he was too old and they feel they hate Trump. They hate Trump. I was just going to say that. That is one thing that is still true in these groups. Most of them hate Trump. We're going to get to the Trumps. In fact, I'm not going to stop opining because I'll have more time to do that at the end. I want to get to I want to get to what these Trump to Biden voters in these groups said after the debate. Let's listen to some flippers before the debate.

was leaning a little more towards Biden, even though I've been hearing some inklings of him kind of deteriorating mentally and whatnot. But you know, you don't know what's a rumor and whatnot. But after seeing that, they're saying he was sick. And I don't know. So I was a little scary. But I also don't want Trump either. So I felt like Biden, like,

was not staying on topic. Like I felt like he would start saying something and then all of a sudden he was like, oh, butterfly. Like it felt like he just was like all of a sudden like talking about something completely different. And then Trump would like confidently address like, okay, I think this is where he was trying to go. I kind of walked away with derangement versus impairment. That's kind of, you know, the taste that was left in my mouth.

And, you know, to say who won, what does winning mean? Does winning mean being articulate and performing well, improvising well in front of a camera? Because, you know, if that is the criteria for winning, then it was the game show host salesman, of course. If Kamala Harris wasn't such an absentee landlord...

I think I would feel a lot less worrisome about Biden because, you know, my grandfather was 86 when he passed away. So like if Joe were to go and you had somebody capable or at least visible, I would feel so much better at this point. Who who friggin knows? Biden came across as more like an animatronic waxwork that they forgot to wind up. I don't think even he was on stage.

I went into it looking for Joe, "Joe, give me a reason. Please give me a reason." And he didn't give me one. He actually gave me a reason not to vote for him. And I'm like, "Whoa, Joe, you messed it up." There would be something refreshing to go, "We made a mistake. We didn't know. We didn't understand. You know, he was so isolated from us. We didn't know what we were getting." The whole world could see, you know, what he is without the teleprompter.

Trump did much better than I expected and actually way better than Biden. I just felt like even though there was one issue with Biden, of course, as we've been talking about, where he seemed to be not quite himself mentally, but also when he did actually start talking, you know, pretty normal. I didn't hear anything convincing from him as far as what his plans were for the future.

It was really, really hard to watch for me. Like, I mean, just total cringe, particularly Biden. Like, I definitely thought that Biden would do a better job. One thing I will say, Trump was less abrasive than I expected. I mean, I think that it was clear to me to see the two and like see how they were prepped. And I think that Trump stuck to that prepping and Biden was not able to stay on point with that.

with Biden. I know. And somebody said this, he does want to do what's best for America. He does. Like he has every intent to do good for everyone, but it's just how he can deliver it or get us there. He just may not be forceful enough to do that. Honestly, if the election was today, I would probably as much as it

Sometimes pains me to say I would vote for Trump again. I just think that he did do a better job economy wise. So I don't have any regrets for voting for Biden, but I just think Trump is just a stronger candidate overall, as bad as he is as a person. Yeah.

As bad as he is as a person. Okay. Um, and look, while voters viewed Biden less favorably after the debate, many, uh, but not all, uh, we're still planning to vote for him. Uh,

So a lot of these people, even when even though what you just heard, which was just, you know, eviscerating Biden's performance, a lot of them are still going to vote for him. But for some in the group who are kind of looking for a reason to go back to Trump, you know, they got it. And I'll just say in the head to heads, we did ask sort of people who are you going to vote for? And in one of the groups of Trump to Biden voters, so these are all people who voted for Biden in 2020.

Five of them were going to go Biden, but four were going back to Trump. And then in the other group, five of them were going to go for Biden. One was going to go for Trump and two were going to go for RFK. So in our swing voter group, you're getting some real backsliding. Now, I will say, too, it's not unheard of for us to see groups like this over the last year. And the thing we don't need to substitute this for polling. I don't like to substitute the focus groups for polling. But Puck News just now, just before we got on pretty much.

reported some internal poll results from the Democratic data firm Open Labs that it's been leaked, was leaked, that showed Biden losing about two points in every swing state and Trump winning states like New Mexico, Virginia, and New Hampshire, and then being competitive in Maine, Minnesota, and Colorado. We're going to link to that in the show notes. All right, so Tim,

put yourself into your bunker mentality campaign staff hat. What data points is the Biden team looking for to make the case that he needs to stay in this race? And what would you say to them or to Biden himself right now? I mean, I'd say that these were catastrophic and cataclysmic groups. I like I just I hear you. It's like, yeah, five of them and both said that they'd overbide in the end. But the

What you're looking for in the qualitative is how they're talking about the race. And their words about Biden in this, and they're treating him like a mummy. It was a joke in some of the groups. They were laughing at it. I mean, it was really sad, but harsh. And so, look, I think that

Not all of the people in both of those groups are get backable. Is that a phrase? Get backable. Some of them are, I think, right? Again, I think the same theory of the case that led to the first debate, which was, can we get them to focus their mind on how bad Trump is in October and claw a couple of them back? That's possible. That's going to be the work that everybody in the pro-democracy coalition is going to have to do. That it's going to be totally about disqualifying Trump and not about Biden. And what you heard in those groups,

was, well, they didn't like Trump, you know, and while they were reminded about his lies and his obnoxiousness, many people said, like, ah, you can tell that he kind of softened the edges. He calmed down. And one guy in one of the groups was talking about how

you know, he thought Trump's really learned some things since 2016 because the old Trump would have just eviscerated Biden. And I kind of agreed with that. Like, frankly, like Trump left a lot of opportunities on the table to get really aggressive and mocking of Biden in a way that showed some restraint that you don't really see out of Donald Trump. So, you know, I think that all of that is, you know,

The takeaway is they're going to have to disqualify Trump. It was a two-part plan to begin with, demonstrate Biden has the vigor and some basic plans for the next term and disqualify Trump. The first part of that equation might be out the window. And so it might just be a disqualified Trump side of things. So if I was talking to Biden himself, I would say right before we got on, there's some memo that went out where they're talking about the Davos Dems that are bedwetting. Well, I'd say to the Biden campaign, you can watch these groups. These people are not going to Davos.

And every single one of them thought Joe Biden should leave the race. They thought a bunch of things. I mean, they thought that Biden. So one of the things we asked in the group was, did Biden do as well as you expected? Because here's let me just tell you one of my key things that I was looking for in the groups. There was a part of me that wondered.

If the Biden team wasn't going to have a point in that, to some degree, I've heard so much about Biden's age from voters that like, was it baked in? Yeah. Was it baked in? Right. And and so one of the questions that we asked was, did Biden do better than you expected, worse than you expected or about the same? And everybody said worse. OK, people were genuinely shocked by his performance. They were not like.

oh yeah, that's about what I thought of this old guy. They were like, oh my gosh, this is terrible. And they sort of had like, they'd gotten the memo on the cold, but like they kind of didn't buy that.

People laughed at the cold. I don't know if you have that audio, but I was live texting this to my husband. And I was like, we just moderator just offered the cold as an excuse. And the group laughed like they I think some people thought that the moderator was joking. Yeah. Yeah. No, nobody bought the cold thing. And like,

They all said they felt worse about it after about the prospect of Biden. They all said they no one thought he would finish his second term. Nobody thought he would finish his second term, which I thought was a pretty key element, in addition to then wanting him to step aside. And so, yeah, I just that you're right. Some of those were hand raises. And so we don't have sound for all of them. But like.

it is important for our listeners to know how much these people are like, can't we have anybody else? He should not be doing this. All right. I want to do some of the Trump stuff though, because I do think it was notable. I do think there, there is not a crazy thing to wonder if the dynamics of the race could be baked in so that people know Joe Biden's old and they still think Trump's a lunatic, even though he was delivering a slightly more normal performance. And I think that, yeah,

you know, we found this in this group that even though some people thought that he was, quote unquote, more normal than usual, and sometimes they even talked about his strength, they still largely found him pretty noxious. And so let's listen to what we heard about this debate from, and this is from our group of two-time Trump voters who were down on Trump from the day after the debate.

I was really hopeful that maybe Trump had changed or at least had advisors that would tell him, you know, if you want to win over some of these people, that his smugness, the smirks on his face, his name calling of a man that,

is obviously not in a position to lead the country. I was hopeful that he would rise above that and be a bigger person, but he's not capable of it. He's not capable. He's just a bully. I think Trump held himself together more than he typically does.

because he's usually very animated and condescending and all of those things that we've seen from him. However, I did not feel that he was being honest in a lot of his answers. And so deep down, I think we saw the real Trump that we all know is inside there.

I think Biden was, you know, we noticed the cognitive issues with him, particularly when they asked the first question concerning the economy. You know, he rambled off of something about Medicare that wasn't even talking about inflation. I have some concerns about that. Trump is a fairly strong orator anyway, and he did seem to come across pretty strongly. But when they asked him the probing questions about January 6th, he kind of went off talking about immigration. How?

pathological narcissist is what I think he is. I think he actually contained himself last night in comparison to what we've seen in the past. But I think that the fact that he just continually lied, stretched the truth, whatever you want to call it, it was not being truthful and there was a lack of integrity. I was hoping that he would not turn into an idiot.

But it didn't take long for him to go back to his usual attacks. The whole world was watching this last night. It wasn't just us in the United States. And I was very embarrassed to have these two people up there. You know, I'm an American, true and true, as we all are. But I was really hurt by watching the one person not telling the truth and the other person

staring at the guy like he didn't know what we were talking about. He may or may not have still had a touch of a cold. I don't think that was the issue last night. A cold does not cause you to seem foggy-headed, spaced out, all of those things.

I don't know. A cold does do that to me. But still, this was it was just evidence that people were not buying the cold thing as like a as like a reason for why that performance in particular would have happened. I got to tell you, sir, I have to defend your honor here. I've I've podcasted with you on a cold and you can at least make some coherent paragraphs. OK, maybe maybe sometimes you lose your train of thought, but not in every sentence.

I do sometimes lose my train of thought. That's like a Sarah Longwell hallmark. They get cut out of things. The number of times where I have to be like, what was I just talking about? Part of it's because I go down some rabbit hole ranting like I am right now. Anyway, back to it. Okay. So while they were all worried about Biden's cognitive abilities after the debate, right? None of them were, and none of these guys, so these are the two-time Trump voters, but are down on Trump. None of them were going to vote for Biden. None of them were going to vote for Trump either. So that was interesting. We ended up with a lot of, um,

votes for the couch, leaving the top of the ticket blank, taking another look at a third party. I was disappointed. Like one of the things you heard in this group is there's a few Biden leaners, like people who had said, you know what, I think I'm going to go to Biden, who then were like, nope, can't do it. Can't do it. These are key folks. So it might seem like a less important group than the other three because they were Trump voters, not Biden voters. But you

You know, Biden has bleed among Biden voters, right? Across a lot of demographics. We've talked about a young voters, black voters. And so where's that game coming from? It's supposed to come from to offset the loss of democratic constituencies. It's supposed to come from these folks that are two that are Republicans that are still enough on earth one that to be upset about the January 6th insurrection. And, you know, it's mostly college educated type folks that,

And, you know, they're not going to be with Biden ideologically, but they want to find a safe landing spot. And he just he just didn't give it to him, you know, and it's not. And also in a different context, I'd say maybe I kind of doubt that they're being fully forthcoming because people usually don't keep the top of the ticket blank. Like that would have been my thought 10 years ago.

But we saw this in 2016, these very type people that left the top of the ticket blank and voted for Ron Johnson in Wisconsin. You can just look at it in the data in 16 in some of these key states where Trump beat Hillary, where people, Republican types voted for the Republican for Senate and governor and didn't vote for president. And then in 2020, those same people voted for Biden. And now it seems like they're sliding back. That's a problem.

It is a problem. I guess here's if I was the campaign, right, and I'm trying to make the case that they're trying to make, I would guess I would say something like, well, these voters say that they're going to go give another hard look to RFK or they're going to. But, you know, there's still a lot of time left and they're going to see Trump act like a lunatic, you know, a bunch. And so they can they can be won back. They can go back to Biden. Those Biden leaners, we can get them back. Do you buy that? I mean, yeah.

So here's the way in which I buy it.

I think that there is still four months left. This is unprecedented, the situation that we're in. Donald Trump is extremely unappealing to almost everybody in these groups, like all four groups. And so, you know, could something happen that reminds them how much they hate Trump and shakes them enough that they, you know, kind of end up really deeply reluctantly going home to Joe Biden in the end?

I'm not saying there's a 0% chance of that. You can hear a little hints of it in some of what they're saying. But the other thing I think is if the course has stayed, we haven't heard a lot from Donald Trump this week.

And we might not. I mean, Donald Trump's happy golfing. And so, you know, I mean, sure, he's irrational. Sure, he's impulsive. He might get in his own way. But we haven't really seen a general election. But we've seen in the primary what Donald Trump does when he's in a big lead. And he's happy to sit on it. And so, you know, I think that's...

that is kind of the other side of this, that like in a lot of ways, it's then out of the campaign's hands. Like the Biden campaign is saying they'll come back to us because they'll find Trump so crazy. And it's like, well, you're losing opportunities to make that case. Well, that's it. I think, I think this is where I sort of don't buy the, it was just 90 minutes. I mean, there's a lot of reasons I don't buy that, but I think I want to make,

They, the part of it that gets frustrating is this is where I feel like we're being gaslit a little bit by our pals over there, which is like, no, it wasn't just 90 minutes. This was the turnaround opportunity. Like you are from coming from behind. You had to knock this out of the park. That was the only option. And instead of knocking out of the park,

it was like a huge, I don't want to use this. It's a total shit. The bed, uh, right. Like just, and so the, the idea that you can go get these guys, but, and then part of it too is like, okay, so you needed to shift it to shift the momentum. And,

And show people that Biden could do it. The problem is then you also had to keep showing people Biden could do it. It was it was meant to be kind of a turnaround moment that you built on. Right. Because you weren't going to like reclaim a lead over Trump in a day. You had to get competitive, start getting under Trump's skin, making him irrational, keeping him in the race, making him because the courts aren't going to do it. You're not going to get any of these court cases that people thought were going to be in there. In fact, his sentencing got moved back to September today.

you know, which they're not even going to do because they're going to consider whether or not now that this immunity thing has this immunity case, they're going to try to appeal. They're going to try to appeal the conviction in the Stormy Daniels case, which they're going to let them maybe do. Yes. No, they're going to appeal it. They're going to let them do it. So if they're going to let

Let them do it. Like, yes, they've moved back to sentencing September, but that like might not even happen. So you are head to head with Trump and you've got this RFK guy in the race that people are given that it's given people an out against a binary choice. So like it just is.

It's really, really precarious. And so I want to shift to the case for Biden getting out of the race, because at this moment, I would say we've now had a couple of congressmen call for Biden to get out. We've had Jim Clyburn say that he would. There's a little common momentum happening. I think there's people starting to Pelosi's not given a full throated defense like that.

the door is starting to crack open to people being like, actually, maybe. And like the hits just keep on coming with the bad polling. There's a CNN poll out today that's got Trump up six. And, you know, it's bad all around. So,

The most depressing sound we got came from a group of Clinton Biden voters who are now undecided. So these are these are Dems who right now are undecided. And I want to listen to how they talked about this. I'm at a point now where it's not even the lesser two evils anymore. It's like, what do you do?

I can't vote for Trump and now I'm with Matt Biden. Like, oh God. Like, this was so embarrassing. I just feel like the Democrats are just too soft. They're too soft. They don't have the gumption to go against the Republicans. So I'm thinking, can we do this four more years? Like,

who's really running the country because it couldn't be biden no i took care of my mom uh the last three years of her life and she had dementia sometimes she was fine other times she couldn't figure out how to lock a lock on a door that's how i viewed how joe biden is you know he did awful

And I wanted to just chalk it up for one night, but I have to look at his track record over the last year. He's fallen down steps two or three times. It's not like the first time that he's been in that type of mental capacity. And I noticed in the debate, he was all over the place. But then the next day in that rally, it seemed like the old Joe Biden. So I'm like, are they giving him something? I mean, I'm serious. I'm like, okay, does he have to have some type of stimulant to function? Because the difference was so drastic.

I thought that in that rally, he was on something. Like, I don't think age is what we're worried about. He could be 90 and sharp-witted, but he's not. It's his brain. It's not the age. It's the brain. Because my grandmother was 98 when she died, but she had the sharpest brain ever. He's just not all there anymore.

Afterwards, whether the footage is accurate or not, you see Donald Trump leave the stage and you see Jill Biden have to help the president of the United States navigate walking down four stairs looking like a very frail person. Before the debate, I was freaked out because of Joe Biden's age. You know, worried, you know, as you get up there, your mind just does not function properly.

the way it did when you were younger. And, you know, he's kind of slipping and kind of old, you know, and even though I don't like Donald Trump, he comes across as being a leader. Not that that makes me vote for him. It just makes me throw up my hands, you know, and go like, these are the choices we have.

When you think about the President of the United States, he's supposed to be representing the United States of America. And to think that that is the person going into other countries and negotiating on our behalf makes me very nervous with Joe Biden.

He's old as hell. Like, I mean, to the point where, you know, we should all be so lucky to live that long at this point, I'm thinking. But, you know, is he on his game? Is he capable? It feels like a sort of cornered situation if he's the one that has the most or he's the most well-known. So you back him, but it's getting harder and harder to do that.

OK, so three of the people in this group of Democrats who've reliably voted for Democrats in the past couple of elections, we're going to leave their ballots blank in November. And I think that's the part that's really, really hard to look past. So, Tim, if you just want to react to the group, go ahead. I do want to ask you about if we're going to seriously explore the possibility of replacing Biden, which is the topic of conversation.

Is it even possible to pull off a win with 12 weeks with a new candidate? And like, let's talk about the risks. Like, let's just talk about it. I think most of them are get backable, right? Which shows you about our polarized times. And when people say, and this goes to the question of strategy, when people say, okay, let's look at the polls. It's like, oh, Biden's only dropped about two or 3% in the polls. Well, it's because it's a lot of these people, like Biden's already close to the low watermark for what a Democrat could be at against Donald Trump.

Right. Like 42 percent of the country is going to vote for a potato against Donald Trump. Right. And so you're seeing and many of these people that you're seeing dropping off like those in that that we just heard from like Trump isn't even they're not even thinking about Trump. Right. It's just it's Biden or the couch or Biden or, you know, a write in or whatever.

So you can win some of those folks back, which is the best case for the Biden people. But I think that you start to look at alternatives. Could somebody else win? And

you know pretty positive in those groups um you see faces start to light up a little bit when you hear about okay we're gonna have another option the details the faces start to come back down to neutral a little bit more but but uh but you know um the the more realistic the less excited the more fantastical the more excited as obvious as is human nature so you know the kamala does not do particularly great in these groups there's a little discouraging

Again, that's not data. Right. And this is qualitative. But you've heard from that a lot. They also don't know a lot about Kamala. So it feels like there's a little more room to grow for her than for Biden. Right. Like they've rendered a judgment on Biden now. Most of them don't know a lot about Kamala. Most of them don't know a lot about the other names that you'd throw out there, Whitmer and Shapiro. But they do way better.

right? Which shows you that like literally generic Democrat would be the best candidate possible. And so could they pull it off in 12 weeks? I think so. I mean, I think it's going to be tough. I think there's risks either way, but I would say that the things that these groups show is among the core constituencies that are the problem. Biden, Democrats that are upset with Biden or think he's too old, never Trumpers, you know, who are, who are, who don't aren't feeling comfortable with Biden, right?

all four of those groups, you know, you can see some people that you could pull back with a new person, right? Like they're really just looking for somebody to get behind. They have some specific concerns about calm, which we can talk about, but they're really looking for somebody to get behind. And I think that you can at least get this thing back towards a real campaign, you

you know, where, where you're kind of towards even ground. Right. And if you just look at these poll numbers, I think you really make up most of the ground that the Democrats are behind just by bringing back people that should be with Democrats, but aren't. Then you get into the persuasion part. And the question is in 12 weeks, can a new candidate persuade the people that are literal swing voters like Trump, Democrat swing voters, or,

Or are they going to get sunk by just this massive right wing media machine that's going to come at them and take things out of context and plumb the depths of their histories? And that's an unknown, right? I think. But I think it's possible. There's certainly risks associated with it.

Well, I want to close out. We can talk about this a little bit more. I want to close out with what these undecided 2020 Biden voters said about Kamala Harris, because realistically, if Biden were to be replaced on the ticket,

I think she's the most likely alternative today. I think that if Biden does step aside, you sort of normalize the idea that Biden is stepping aside and like who knows what happens from there. But certainly there's going to be a big movement for it to be her despite sort of her liabilities. And so I want to listen to what these voters and again, these are the undecided 2020 Biden voters. Let's listen to what they said about Harris.

So she has, unfortunately, and I hate to say this, but she already has two strikes against her. She's not going to get a lot of people to support her and she won't get the necessary votes. So they won't back her. It's unfortunate, but that's just the world we live in.

We will hope that we were in better race relations at this point in our society, in our country. But it's like we regressed. Like, as far as racial attitudes, I was born in 1962, so I saw all these civil rights when I was a little child. To me, it feels like we've gone back to that era, and it's sad to see that. So I just don't think she would get the support, not only because of the lack of her abilities, but also because who she is. She's an African-American lady, and we have to be realist.

she would lose a lot of the Black vote behind that because she prosecuted a lot of Black people on sometimes misdemeanor to felony crimes that were really not so fine. Just that history of her as a prosecutor and her not having great name recognition would not give her a chance to get voted in. So two of those people that you just heard from said that they would still leave the top of the ticket blank if Harris was the nominee. And Tim, I got to tell you,

I am like, just, I am, call me a bedwetter. Call me somebody who panics, whatever. I, uh, look, I didn't think Biden should run again, but I, I've sucked it up.

I've been listening to voters for a long time. I still thought Biden, the Biden from the state of the union, I thought the, I could, I bought the case, the case of, of this isn't about Biden. It's about Trump, but Biden had to give us just enough. And I think we, we don't have it. And so I will, people will get really mad when you don't just like stick by, but I do think that they might need to be a little more, they got to understand that one of the central things about never Trumpers is that when

When we were presented with something that we thought was unacceptable, we said so. And we did it even though lots of people yelled at us. And so we still have this quality where you can yell at us on Twitter. You can go right ahead. Been there.

But you know what? That's not going to stop us from saying what we think is something pretty obvious in front of our faces, which is the thing about these voters. They weren't just questioning Joe Biden's ability in the next four years. They were questioning his ability to be president right now. They were they were saying, like, who is running the country? Who is doing this? And so but the thing is, I've also been listening to voters talk about Kamala for a long time.

And I she is universally panned as well. And so and she's also she's panned by. So sometimes people are like, well, you know, black voters would be really mad. Those were all black voters. Now, now the case they were making was a little different. The case they were making and people do this a lot where they sort of.

They armchair pundit like they're like, well, you know, America's never going to elect a gay president or America's not going to elect another female president. And they're pretty down on. And I'm like, it wasn't that long ago we elected our first black president. So I think and frankly, listen, what?

The number one name that comes up when I ask people who they want to see run is Michelle Obama. Right. So, like, I don't think you couldn't elect a black woman in this country. I think you could. I do not. I think Kamala, though, has some some liabilities. But as you mentioned, one of the big knocks on her that I hear from voters all the time is that they don't see her. Yeah. And they don't know much about her.

which means there's room for improvement. There's room to get to some people. And so, you know, we just got the CNN poll that had Trump leading Biden 49-43 nationally. That's a six point. He's up six points, but he's only leading Harris 47-45. So it does suggest she could be a better bet

right now. What do you think? The question is, can she get over that hump? Because like I said, I think any of these folks get this race basically to tide immediately because we're a tide country. And the reason why Joe Biden's not tied is because people that should be voting for him are saying that they're not because of his age, mostly and a little bit of Gaza for some young people and a little bit of inflation. So can Kamala get back to tide? Yes. Can she get over the hump and win?

I don't know. I think I'm kind of more bullish on the Kamala than your average bear because that's a horrible mixed metaphor, but I'm more bullish on Kamala because I think that she's kind of unfairly panned in a lot of ways. It's the

cleanest transfer. You know, she would be able to pick up all the data, all the money and the infrastructure, all the infrastructure, less of a fight. So, uh, you know, on that side, you could maybe pair with, you know, somebody, a governor, you know, somebody that feels like a little bit safer. Um,

You know, I don't know. But the things that give me pause are three things. One, her performance has some sometimes you just you can see that she gets in her head and she gets the yips a little bit. And boy, like she's going to be thrown into the spotlight immediately. And is she going to be able to live up to the moment? I would hope so. And I think if she does, I think she'd have room to grow her balance.

The other two things that can be paused are things I just feel very ill-suited to be able to judge. And you hear in these groups, and I hear from people in my life all the time, we're never going to like this black woman, like you just said. And I don't know. I'm kind of with you. I feel like maybe we could. I don't know. But maybe being a white guy, maybe I just don't.

maybe the things I don't know, right? Like there's some, some insights about the human psyche that being a woman or being black would have. Cause it's usually women or black people that I'm talking to who are like, they're never going to do it. Right. So that gives me a little bit of pause. And then just black voters in general, general, you know,

Joe Biden's numbers aren't as good as they need to be. People are like, there's like the most basic level of this. Well, having a black person at the top will help. Like, maybe not. Like you just heard from black voters in those focus groups. There are concerns. There are concerns about her record on criminal justice. The Trump campaign will immediately go full on Kamala, the cop, like, you know, like that will be a full on effort to undermine the, uh, with, with black voters, uh,

And I don't know if that will work or not. I hope not. I don't think so. But I think that's a risk that I feel kind of ill-suited to judge. So look, all of these paths are risky. Passing over Kamala obviously carries another set of risks. Would people be mad about that? Would Black voters be mad? Would women be mad? Would the mess of it create too much drama?

You know, all of that, I don't know. What I do know is that anyone right now is pulling better than Biden. And I think that if Kamala was up for the performance side of it, she obviously would be much better than Biden, would be able to carry a message, and it would be a huge upgrade over the status quo. And if somehow there was a way to get a fantasy generic Democrat on the top of the ticket, that's probably the best case scenario. But that seems a little bit far-fetched right now.

Yeah. So I would say if I had to do my analysis, it's like Kamala better than Joe, somebody else better than Kamala. But like, I have been pushed to a place where after years of listening to people talk about how much they don't like Kamala Harris.

I still think she would be preferable. And look, I'm with you, too. And I want to get to some of the way that the swing voters talk about it, because I think it's illustrative of what I often hear that has made me so concerned about her. Besides what I see with my own eyes, which is somebody who has not shown themselves to be a particularly talented politician. That being said, here's my thing.

I watched Kamala in those early days when she was both in the Senate and when she was an early candidate. And we all thought she had a ton of promise because we watched her light people up. Yes. Like she eviscerated some people like she had. She got she's got that prosecutorial manner. And I agree with you on the yips. Like she just like.

Something about the stage, something about the having to, I don't know. I don't know what it is about her, but she gets in her head and then she says weird things and then she laughs. And man, boy, do people talk about her laugh, which I always think is a little bit unfair because I don't think her laugh is funny.

unpleasant as somebody who laughs a lot into people's ears. I don't know. I think her laugh is perfectly genial. I just think that it's awkward. Like there's something about her that feels like it's like,

awkward, trying too hard. It doesn't feel natural. And like, that's a tough thing to put into the biggest situation. If I was looking at these numbers and I was her same way, if I was looking at these and I was Joe Biden, there's part of what I never understand is that people who believe, as I believe that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy, don't look in the mirror and say, am I the best person to do this?

And maybe you don't get to their heights without looking in the mirror and having that answer always be yes. But I would say, no, if there's somebody better who can do this, who can win, like, let's talk about what that looks like. I don't think that's going to happen. Yeah, I don't know. If this way, if Joe Biden leaves, look, I, again, I find myself with you on the commas. That is the next best option. It's certainly a better option than Biden at this point. I don't, I mean, I don't know. Like,

Would it not make sense for the Democratic Party to say, hey, okay, we're in an unprecedented situation. It's unprecedented times. Let's hear from a couple people. Let's hear from a couple people. And Kamala is the most likely person to get it. She has a lot of advantages. She would be able to make that case to the delegates. She'd have the California delegates.

And, and would probably be the person that people would turn to. But frankly, maybe that would be good for Kamala is, I guess where I'm getting to, right. So that it's not like this immediate pressure cooker where Joe Biden quits. And now you have to go on 60 minutes and you have to do all this stuff. And no one thinks you earned it. No one like the idea of earning it. Okay. So I'm just going to tell you quickly about survivor in survivor at the end of the game. There's always this question of like, who's going to get to go to the end.

And at the end, because at the end, that's where you get the million dollars. You get to make your case. You're so tuned out, but I am going to go with this thing. I actually have John Lovett on the Daily Podcast this week, so this is good. I need to get briefed on the survivor analogy. And so one of the things that happens at the end is the person who has won the immunity and they're definitely going to the end, they get to choose to take somebody with them. And they usually choose to take the goat, right? The person that they think can't win. That's who they just automatically take. And then they make...

two other people make fire. And a lot of times people want to make fire. They want to get in there and make fire because they need it to demonstrate that they can do something, right? They need like a high pressure moment to be like, I'm putting this on my resume to show that I've earned it, that I've earned my way to the end. I'm not a goat. No one's just taking me. And this is that moment to make fire for Kamala. Like I think this idea of,

of there's probably like the overlap, the Venn diagram of people who understand my survivor analogies and like care about focus groups has got to be really small. But I'm getting there though. I'm not caring about survivor. I'm, I'm, I'm getting the speech though. Like I'm getting riled up. Yeah. So like the ability for there to be some kind of a candidate forum, it's because I will say the one thing that holds me back on Biden, this is maybe the only thing that I actually find a compelling point is when people are like, he was elected by the voters, right? Like,

We had a primary. And the idea of a bunch of people, like who makes this decision about who the next person is? Like it feels like there does need to be a mechanism that makes –

Democrats feel like they've gotten some kind of say as opposed to that just being picked out of nowhere. And so the idea of a candidate form of some kind, I don't know what the mechanism is then that allows like a massive amount of Democrats. I mean, it's basically the people who are the activists in the party ultimately get to choose. But I do think that it would benefit her if she came out of that as people were people saying, oh, she was excellent. She was really good. And I believe she can do it now.

Yeah, I agree with that. I think that could help her. Boy, I don't know. We're in real uncharted waters here, girl. Well, let me just before we close, I did. I forgot to I want to just hit the swing voters because I think the first two people you're about to hear are these two time Trump voters who are down on Trump and then the rest are the Trump to Biden voters. And I do want you to hear the way swing voters talk about her because I listen to this a lot. It's one of things that makes me really worried about her as a candidate.

So Biden has an excuse that he's 86 years old and there's a deterioration in cognitive ability. Kamala Harris does not. When you listen to her, I mean, it sounds like she's a tossed salad, honestly. You cannot ascertain what points she's looking to make, and she just goes round and round and round.

And we talked about Kamala Harris a little bit. And one of her drawbacks, I think, and I don't know if the rest of you know this, but President Biden had her basically in charge of immigration. And she never went to the border.

for I believe six months. They were calling for her to come down to the border. She never came. And I think the Republicans will make Jess wipe her out on that issue because she's really one of the things that has really hurt the immigration process at the border. I don't think there's any way for her to beat Trump. That has to be part of my thought process also is that it's not Biden, but it also needs to be somebody

I need to be comfortable voting for them, but I also just look at it on a broad picture and like, will she actually achieve that desired result? And I'm not confident that she would. Everybody knew who Pence was. Everybody knew who Biden was as VPs. Nobody knows Harris. I mean, she's been in office for three and a half, four years now.

And I couldn't tell you what she's done. I thought that was what she was with, the gun control and the border. And I don't think she's done a very great job with that. So for me, I wouldn't vote for her. I don't know. I don't think she has a chance versus Trump. She scares me. Beside the guy that did Backpage, she kept prosecuting and prosecuting until he couldn't take it anymore and killed himself. And again, I lived in California and her and Newsom are the reason I left and moved to Georgia.

One of them. So that right there, just I don't like what she does. I don't like what she says. And they pretty much sidelined her and stuck her in a box for the last four years and haven't really let anybody get to know her. This is just what I hear all the time. That is like completely consistent. And for people who might ask, like, well, do you ever ask black voters? Like, yes. And I got to tell you, I don't find black voters who like her either. And yeah, there's a they're they're pretty consistent.

There's a real sense of, I don't know, her letting people down. Like there's a lot of like I had high expectations of her and she's been really bad. I do. I will say the most consistent thing that we hear about Kamala is that people don't know what she does. They don't see her. And to me, that's a little bit of an opportunity. Exactly. And so, you know, I think that.

Look, I think with Biden now, with where he is and where I see voters are with him, I don't think there's a lot of upside on him. I think there could be upside on her. And I think I would at this point, which might surprise people, but I would take that risk over the status quo. And here's one of the reasons why. People already think.

That they're running against Kamala Harris to some degree, like Trump already, like they're already like, Hey, look, Biden's going to die and it's going to be her. People are already running against her. And so like, you might as well get the upside of her bringing together a more engaged, diverse coalition, younger people, then like, they're going to scare people with her anyway. I don't know that it's like more scary to those, you know, old white voters. If, if,

it's, they think they're going to get her anyway. Why not just get the upside on it? The argument, which some of the Biden people seem to be doing on background that like, if it's not us, it's Kamala and you don't want that because Kamala can't win. It's like, it's already Kamala. That argument doesn't make any sense. Like that argument is not like, it's nonsensical. Um, it's like an Ouroboros. It's like that Kamala is right now on the ballot already. Um, and so I, you know, that is not a compelling argument for staying with Biden for me. Um,

Yeah, look, when you hear these things, there's some specific concerns people have. The Kamala cop thing with black voters is something that the right is going to try to expose. So you're going to have to combat that. The border thing with some of these swing voters is something people are going to mention because Biden saddled her with that at the beginning of the administration, which is unfortunate. But the rest of the complaints, like you say, are more about...

Not seeing her, she's a lightweight, a little misogyny there probably, and things like that. And so she could offset that. My advice, if they were listening or calling me to the Harris people, if she does get thrust into this, is I would have her everywhere.

I would just have her everywhere and I would do 20 interviews and I would do, you know, interviews with people that are, you know, not entertainment and news and everything and just try to flood the zone and, and ride a wave. She's going to have some awkward moments on, in those interviews. And so there's, there's going to be a tendency to want to think, okay, let's stage manage this a little bit, but I don't think it's stage manageable. And I think that, that the best way to try to,

get to some of these people's concerns is to, is to really just be in everybody's face. If it ends up being, being Kamala. I, I really agree with that. I think people need to see you. I think Donald Trump changed the way people sort of expect their politicians to engage with them. And I also think it'll help her get her reps in, you know, when she gets just sort of like pulled out and it's like, go to the border. Like, geez, the worst one are like, here, go, go be our person on abortion. Fine. But,

I can understand utilizing her like that as a VP, but like, I just, I think that if she got her reps in and was just had to do it, you know, she'd probably get, get better at it. You see it with Doug Burgum. Look at Doug Burgum. Go back and watch Doug Burgum's interviews at the beginning of his campaign. It's the most awkward things you've ever seen. And now he's out there sucking up to Donald Trump and it's embarrassing and pathetic, but the quality of the interviews are way better. Yeah.

All right, so I know what you guys are thinking. You're thinking, man, this podcast has already been an hour long and you guys haven't talked about Big Gretch or Gavin Newsom. You haven't talked about Buttigieg or Josh Shapiro, some of these other guys. We're going to do a separate episode. There was plenty to chew on. Next, I'm going to do another episode talking about what we heard from folks when we asked about alternatives. And we'll get to that another time. But

For now, Tim Miller, thank you for coming on to have this tough conversation with me. Love keeping in the family when we're doing hard stuff. And thanks to all of you for listening to the Focus Group podcast. Remember to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and subscribe to The Bulwark on YouTube. We will see you next week. Peace.