S3: Biden's B12 Shot? (with Peter Baker) 48:32

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark. And this week, we're talking about the State of the Union and Joe Biden's 2024 re-election prospects.

Now, I got in some internet trouble a couple of weeks ago for saying on Pod Save America that I think Joe Biden would likely lose to a Republican presidential candidate not named Donald Trump. And it is just my basic observation about somebody who is in their early 80s running against somebody who is in their 40s, 50s or 60s. Even when Ronald Reagan ran for reelection and much was made about his age, he was only 73.

Now, in focus groups of both Republicans and Democrats, concerns about Joe Biden's age is a constant refrain. And according to a recent Associated Press poll, a majority of Democrats don't want Biden to run again in 2024. And yet, and yet, old Joe came out swinging in his State of the Union this week. And despite a little rhetorical mush, he did some real time negotiating with Republicans and came out on top.

So how did this energetic performance land with swing voters? Well, you're about to find out. My guest today spends a lot of time around the Biden White House, Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, and also the co-author of The Divider, Trump and the White House, 2017 to 2021. And the second person who is a part of a husband and wife team who have appeared on this podcast. The other one is the Vindmans. Uh,

who have had both of them, but now I have had Susan Glasser and Peter Baker, an impressive team. Peter, thank you for being here. Thank you. Sorry you're stuck with the worst half today. You know, I'll take whichever half I can get for this. This is great. I'm so glad you're here, and because...

You know, one of the things that I was so struck by in the Joe Biden speech is I think because we don't actually see that much of Biden, especially the way Trump was like always in our faces. Like Biden is just, he's not out there all the time. And sometimes that can allow people to like input upon him a presentation that might not be, you know, you just see like clips of him stumbling over things or whatever, but you see him all the time there as the White House correspondent. Yeah.

Is what we saw the other night in the State of the Union, is that the Biden you see all the time? Or was that like Joe Biden with like a big B-12 shot? Well, he was definitely on his game. I mean, not in the first few minutes. I mean, let's not judge him too much on a curve. The first few minutes, he seemed to be racing through the speech. He mangled some words. He demoted Chuck Schumer to minority leader. In fact, there was kind of a, oh gosh, are we watching a car wreck quality to the first few minutes? Is it going to turn out?

But he can't really make it through. And he actually then seemed to rally. And I think partly because he gets into the back and forth with the heckling Republicans that actually energize him a little bit. But broadly speaking, I think you're right. He's not in our face a lot. And that's intentional. They don't want him out there.

Yeah.

You know, look, I think what you see on TV is what we see too. Just, you know, he's slower than he was at 80. I think everybody is. And I think that that's an issue he's going to have to deal with. I don't have any evidence in doing a lot of reporting that it has affected his decision making, right? Nobody has yet to me cited a decision he made as president that he might've made differently had he been 10 years younger.

But there's no question he doesn't have the same energy level. There's no question his presentation is often not as energetic as it was when he was, you know, even just vice president a few years ago.

Right. Noted. But I guess that like, like if you do a Republican focus group, it's not that they think Joe Biden slowed down. It's not that they think he's missing a step here or there. Like they think he has full on dementia and that, you know, he is being controlled by the left wing of the party. And so there's a whole dementia Twitter. I just went, went scrolling through dementia Twitter after the speech and I,

And Dimension Twitter didn't have a lot to say about that performance. You know, like he, I felt like he did a lot to sort of quiet maybe some of the like pundit class on the, I don't know, I think he's too old to do this. Or do you think, look, this is just going to be omnipresent. There's no way for him to sort of take this concern off the table because that number is just going up.

If I were the Biden White House, you know, you could see why they might want to send a bouquet of flowers to Marjorie Taylor Greene, because obviously it gave him the foil in which he could engage in a back and forth in which he did look pretty good. Right. Not spry, but he engaged and he seemed able to handle it. In fact, he had the best experience.

You're up there on the podium. They're down in the audience. You are still in command. And he didn't lose command of it, which is a pretty important thing in politics. He seemed to be the guy in charge. So I think you're right. I quieted it maybe, I would say, but briefly and not for long. I mean, the problem for President Biden is that the biggest political liability he has is one he cannot do anything about. He cannot make himself younger, right?

And so none of us does, of course. And that will always be a liability and an issue for him that he will have to address. And to me, though, the issue isn't even how is he now. Okay, you can make the case that 80, he's doing pretty good, especially if you know some other 80-year-olds who aren't. And what he would say is, look at my record. Look what I've done at age 78 to 80. I've gotten this pass and that pass, and this is getting better and that's getting better. That would be his argument.

the bigger issue that is harder for him to deal with is the fact of what he will be like in six years, because that's what you're asking the country. You're asking the country to accept that he can be at the top of his game, or at least close enough to his top of his game until he's 86 years old. The last day of his presidency. And it's one thing if you have an 86 year old Senator or Congressman who

who may not be fully where they once were. They roll out on the floor, they take a vote, the world isn't going to end. But we're having a nuclear edge conflict right now with Russia. And that's a different thing for a commander in chief. So that's a concern he's going to have to address. And again, as you point out, it's not with Republicans because he's not going to get their votes anyways with Democrats.

Yeah. And like when I got in trouble on Pod Save for saying what I said, it's based on my own analysis after listening to tons and tons of groups of Democrats and swing voters who they'll say, but like, you know, at the end of his term, he'll be closer to 90 than 80. Like you can't have that. And so that's been really my fear is just the optics of if it's not Trump.

You put him up against a 46-year-old Ron DeSantis, even if he's like glowering and just talking about how kids are using litter boxes in schools and you need to fire all the gay teachers, like whatever he's saying, you can still see how those optics are really bad for somebody who's 82 years old. Then voters are just going to be like, I don't know, man.

I mean, especially if you have a stumble, right? And then it's going to be interpreted wildly, magnified. And of course, the trick is that Biden has been a gaffe machine by his own words. He called himself, I think, the ultimate gaffe machine once. He's been like that since he was in his 40s or whatever. But the trick is that if you make gaffes now, if you stumble now, it will be attributed to age, whether it is age or not. Against Trump, it's going to be fine. I think people who don't like Trump or really don't like Trump are not going to suddenly return to him.

necessarily because of Biden's age. There may be other reasons they do. But what's striking about Trump and age is if you go back and watch some of his interviews back when he was in his 40s or 50s, he had a much broader vocabulary. He was actually much more articulate in a way he's not now. Like now he just keeps relying on the same words over and over again, right? Strong, strongly,

You compare where he was then and now, you see some diminishment. But the difference between him and Biden is he does it so loudly. Yeah. You know, he's so bombastic and so energized in his speech that it seemed more vigorous, right, than Biden does. Yeah. Although I just got to say, we haven't seen Trump in a while. Yes. Like we haven't like really seen him. He's out there truthing and calling into shows, but he is not doing a lot.

Not too much.

I got to say, I was surprised both myself in watching the speech and then listening to these voters talk about the speech. I don't know. I mean, I want to get into it. But before I do, I want to give both you, Peter, for your edification and also for those of you listening who maybe haven't listened to the last two seasons of this show or a lot of them about swing voters. I want to give you a quick crash course in how these swing voters talk. So at the start of...

Every group that we do with swing voters, we ask voters to walk us through why they voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and why they switched to Biden in 2020, because that's how we're sort of defining swing voters. So what you're about to hear, this group of swing voters sounded exactly like every group of swing voters we do who answers the question, why did you vote for Trump in 16 and switch to Biden in 2020? Let's listen.

I was looking for something new. I was hesitant with Hillary Clinton, not going to lie. I was very hesitant with everything, with the Benghazi situation, everything that was on the table. And from what I gathered, I, and I even promoted it, said Donald Trump would have been a valuable asset to the country because of the business mind he has. Granted, he has effed up a lot, excuse my French. When Biden came up, I was like, okay, that's it. I can't do this again. No, no, no, no. I'm switching over teams.

I voted for Trump initially because he felt like someone different. I thought he was going to be really honest. It seemed like he was always going to say out loud to us as the people what was really going on. And that kind of changed towards the end. And it got extremely dramatic to where I've never seen politics swing so far one way or another with politics.

families, as well as the pandemic combined with everything. And so again, I just wanted to change. And so I voted for Biden. He just seemed really mild. I voted for Trump just because like everyone else was saying, we needed to drain the swamp, just new blood in there because

I thought that the politicians were too disconnected from their constituents. I have a special needs child. So whenever he mocked the reporter by tapping his chest, that was kind of a real turnoff for me. And then with just the Twitter, you know, the constant Twitter alerts that he would put out, he was an embarrassment. After four years of Trump, I mean, they could have put anybody up there. I mean, a mop with, you know, googly eyes and two gloves. I would have voted for that.

So that's very typical for voters who sort of like took a flyer on Trump the first time, took a chance on him and then decided they did not want to take a chance on a second term. But these swing voters are often pretty grumpy about Biden as well. I would say going into the last election, Biden,

or the midterms, we just did swing voter group after swing voter group. And they were super down on Biden. They're worried about the economy. They're worried about inflation. They wanted to vote for Republicans. They just didn't want to vote for the Republicans that the Republicans were putting up. They didn't want to vote for Blake Masters or Doug Mastriano. But if you've given them sort of a normie Republican, they might've gone for that. But this group, this group, and we screened for the swing voter group

by people who watched the State of the Union. And I don't know, Peter, were you surprised by how pro-Biden this group was?

I was struck by that. Not one of them had any second thoughts about having voted for Biden in 2020. Not one of them was even open to the idea of thinking about Trump again. They were all completely through with him. There was nothing that convinced them to vote for Trump. They could be convinced to vote against Biden, right, for reasons you just said. I mean, some people are still talking about inflation. They're obviously concerned about that. They're concerned about issues like immigration or what have you. And

And they're concerned about his age, but they do not regret their vote for Biden over Trump. And they, to a person, I think, if I remember your group correctly, when asked if it was a rematch in 2024, they all shot their hands up for Biden. Not one of them was interested in changing their minds about that. And most of them, by the way, you know, were still Biden over DeSantis or some of the others, too.

What is it they'd like about Biden? It's instructive, right? It's about his personality. It's about who he is, their idea of who he is. It wasn't about policy, although a few of them brought up this or that. Most of them, they're saying he just seems like a guy that you would like to spend time with. One of them said, I like the pictures of him going down the hall with Obama when he was vice president. I feel like if I saw him in the hall, he would ask me how I'm doing and Trump would tell me I was a slob.

I mean, their sense of him as a person. And one of them, I think, was particularly talking sometimes about his stutter that made him very human, relatable. So that's always been Joe Biden's superpower in politics, of course, is that he is, you know, he's Uncle Joe, right? Everybody knows somebody like him or feels like they know somebody like him in their family. And for all his flaws, and he has many, and they all identified some of them, at least they believe that he cares about them and that he wants to do the right thing or wants to help them out.

Yeah. All right. I want to play some reactions to Biden's State of the Union. I'll note up front that we asked our group to give the speech a grade. Two gave it an A, one gave it a C, and then six gave it a B, which I will tell you from our focus groups, Bs, high marks. And so you'll hear some nitpicks, but actually quite positive reviews. Let's listen.

I deeply appreciated the clip that is now documented with the national audience of the bold GOP standing up and arguing that they support Social Security and Medicare. That was a very masterfully done clip.

I mean, he showed his, somebody else mentioned it, like he showed that the fact that he has been in this a long time and he is extremely experienced. It's not always obvious, but I mean, last night it was clear, like master politic or negotiator. That's what really was the highlight for me.

I like how personable he is. You can tell that he gets along with other constituents in the room or with even with the ones that he don't. He still has that rapport where, well, let's talk this way. Let's angry talk and we'll get something done if we can't reasonably talk.

So I like that. But he threw out a lot of keywords, buzzwords, but he didn't touch in depth on any one topic as much as I would like. I appreciated how he brought in the family of Tyree. I appreciated the bridge steel workers. I like how he's touching on topics that are really important to different parts of the state.

I think he's doing a good job in trying to get people to work together, especially the two parties. So I'm not the person who's voted Democrat all these years, but I tell you, it really makes you think twice.

Where he was coming from in his entire speech is, I'm here with you. We're all together. And I'm going to protect you. I'm thinking of you. You're of the utmost importance to me. He really didn't talk much about the balloon going over the U.S. I thought that was going to be brought up. I mean...

And not to say anything negative about him, because I know, you know, 80 years old, he was a good guy. And that stuttering problem and her name wasn't really easy to pronounce. But the Ukrainian ambassador, he was trying to get it out. You know who you are.

I thought it was very like uplifting. He wants us to be better. And you can feel that like he wants to work with his counterparts. He wants to make the country better. And the four years previously, nothing got accomplished. So he's trying so hard to convey that he's for the people he

As he says, he's a president for everyone, those who voted for him and who didn't vote for him. You can just feel that from him. I mean, I don't know. I've been listening to a lot of voters over the last...

Five years. And I just about any president would wish for people to take away from a speech what these voters took away. Like that one guy who's like, he didn't talk about the balloon. Like that was the guy who gave him a C. Also didn't think he talked enough about police reform. So he had like his specific things. But what?

when you say things like, I think he's doing a good job. He's trying to get people to work together. I think he's there for the people. He's going to protect you. I'm thinking of you. I mean, that's what voters want, right? They want somebody who cares about people like me. And I feel like

Like that really came through. And Peter, you wrote before the speech that in the last 75 years, only Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump had had worse approval ratings at this point in their presidencies than Biden currently has. You also said that Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama all started their rebounds to re-election with a good State of the Union address. So was this that? Was this the kind of speech that could start the Biden rebound? It could. I mean, you know, you don't want to go too far on any single speech. You know, fewer people watch this than...

They stayed in the union in the last 30 years, except for Biden's two years ago. So, you know, your audience is limited and it's harder to make a breakthrough today than it was in Reagan's time. Reagan had an audience that would have been twice as large as this one with a smaller population. We don't have everybody sit down, must see TV anymore, right? So in that sense, there's limited possibility for him. But I think, yeah, if we see that he does rebound, that does run for reelection and wins, you

it may be that people look at this moment as a place where he began to build on that. Now, the difference, of course, between Reagan at his midterm, Clinton and Obama at their midterms is that they all came out of it somewhat smack upside the head, right? You know, for Bush in 2006, he called it a thumping. Obama called it a shellacking. Shellacking. Right? And Clinton was just down the dumps for months. He was just a hang dog. And they all felt like they had been rejected by voters, which they had been.

Biden didn't come out of last November feeling that way, whether he should or not. I mean, they did lose the House, but obviously not by the numbers that they expected. They kept the Senate and even gained a seat. So they came out of there at least with the narrative, whether it's justified or not, that they did okay and that that was even kind of a victory against expectations. So he didn't come into the State of the Union feeling a need to pivot, and he didn't pivot.

He said, look, I'm all for bipartisanship as long as you do what I want. Bipartisanship means you support my priorities. He didn't give any inch to the Republicans who are now in charge of the House. And I think that was the strategy on their part because they don't feel like he needs to switch gears, that as the economy gets better, as inflation comes down, that his numbers will eventually start to come up again, at least as long as they're in relation to Trump.

Yeah, well, in relation to Trump, and then also the Republicans provided him some interesting contrast during that speech. And in fact, this group had some pretty choice words for how Republicans conducted themselves during the speech. Let's listen to that. I was really hoping somebody showed the door to Majority Leader Greene. Like she was the worst. I couldn't take her on screen. I was like, please, please ask her to leave because she was the worst of all.

I agree with that completely. Like it just goes to show like as a mother, I see this generation and how the kids treat teachers and authority in general. And when they do that,

What kind of kids are they raising? Like, that's what I think of. Like, you're the problem, because even if you don't like the president, I was always taught to respect the office. And so it was just so disrespectful for her standing up there. Liar, liar. I mean, you know, it's just what what does that prove? They should have showed her the door. So Marjorie Taylor Greene, absolutely horrible. George Santos as well, too.

At the end of the day, at the end of the day, Mitt Romney comes out of his mouth and says to him, you don't belong here. You don't need to go here. And George Santos is you can basically see he's being defiant. Now, wait a minute. This is a senior leader in your party. First and foremost, respect. There's no respect in that party at all. That party is going through a massive shift. And it looks like you can just tell by how last night played out. They have no decorum. It's just a free for all. It's literally a free for all.

I guess here's the thing. With the Republicans behaving as they are, to your point, they are coming out of these midterms, and I would say just from an expectations game, they crushed it, the Democrats. I mean, I think the Republicans went way too far with their –

red wave certainty. And as a result, their majority looks, it looks like a loss. Like that's how it feels. So Biden's bouncing out of a great midterm. He gives this good speech. The Republicans are providing this insane contrast. If Joe Biden was 73 years old, I think he would crush reelection against a lot of people. Part of the reason that people are going to obsess about his age. And I think a lot of voters, Democratic voters who are not obsessed by his age are going to get really annoyed about how much we talk about it. But it's because that is,

That's his Achilles heel in a scenario where like otherwise he is doing pretty good because like and I'd like you to react sort of to this idea of the Republican contrast. You know, McCarthy's trying to shush people, but they're yelling. And Joe Biden maybe has the best case scenario where, yes, he's the Republicans own the House, but now they're providing that contrast that voters get to be like contrast.

God, I didn't like Donald Trump. I don't like this Trumpy version of the party. And I hate this. Like, isn't that what's allowing Democrats to overperform? So isn't that maybe help Joe Biden?

Absolutely. No question about it. And that's how Clinton and Obama both bounced back to win reelection two years after they take that shellacking in those two midterms. And I think this is exactly what the White House wanted. When they drafted the speech, they identified two places in the speech where they thought Republicans might heckle Biden. And they told him, here are your two places where you might expect that. Guess what? The Republicans did exactly that at exactly those two parts of the speech.

giving them exactly what they wanted. And I was struck that your group, I was so interested in this, your group I think strikes me as politically engaged, but not politically obsessive, right? They're not reading playbook in the morning. They're not paying attention to the ins and outs the way obsessive people like you and me might, but they know Marjorie Taylor Greene's name.

They know who she is. They don't know, by the way, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee or the Armed Services Committee, people who are really, in theory, important on Capitol Hill. The name they know, the personality they have seen is Marjorie Taylor Greene.

She has made herself a face of the Republican Party to the party's detriment, right? Because you see their reaction to her. And that's striking to me. That's Biden's biggest advantage going into this next two years is, in fact, the notion that this Republican majority in the House will come across as over the top, you know, just performative and radical and rude and what have you.

Yeah. You know, there's a lot of like Joe Biden ran from his basement in 20. And I'm not sure that that contrast, if he ran from his basement again and he kind of kept the age thing on the DL a little bit, these guys will be clown themselves left and right and say, like, listen to all these sprinklers. They do not see themselves in the same coalition with Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Like, base voters, sure. But the swing voters do not. Okay, so I will say that if you listen to these voters' reactions to the speech and their visceral reactions to the Republican Party, they're all set to vote for Biden again. But when we asked our group, two people wanted Biden to run again, two people wanted him not to run, and the rest were undecided, kind of somewhere in between. Let's listen to some of the concerns about Biden running again, and I think you're going to hear some obvious themes that we've already touched on.

I mean, as far as the speech goes last night, I could tell that, you know, he wasn't really reading from it. He remembered a lot of it. He seemed very coherent. But then there was moments. And I mean, I have a grandfather who lived to 98 years old and I work in a nursing home and I recognize clarity of mind. And I don't even I don't even think it's a speech impediment. I think that he just disappears from when he's speaking sometimes. And that scares me.

a little bit because it just shows that maybe all the people around him really are running things a little bit more if we have someone that is lacking that kind of thing. It's not because I don't want a Democrat in there again. It's not because I don't like Biden. I think we need a younger, more vivacious person in there.

I think I want him to run, but he's going to need a stronger VP support. Me, I don't want him to run with, how do I say this, a lackluster VP there, because then he's going to lose. So might as well have a better precedent candidate from Democrat side. So I think there's a lot to be done by Democrats in the next two years. I do want him to run, but I think he's going to need a lot of support from his VP candidate.

So all but one person in the group thought Biden's age was a concern, but you brought this up before when we asked people to choose between Biden and Trump and Biden to Santa's like, Biden got a clean sweep from this group. And so even though age is the most obvious roadblock, I guess the other things that he could have that are coming down the pike, and you must be covering this, are like the two years of investigations into Hunter. We asked them about the documents. We don't have sound from the documents thing, but it's

Everybody was just like throwing up their hands. Like, well, clearly the whole documents thing is, you know, ridiculous and we don't really know how to evaluate that. I mean, one person did say, you know, it depends on what's in there. We don't really know yet. But do you think that the Republican investigations, which way do you think that's going to go? Is that going to bounce towards chipping away at Biden's viability or is that going to

again, highlight Republicans caring about things that most voters don't care about? Yeah, it's a great question. I don't know that we know the answer. We should be careful about predicting, but I think you're right. Look, it is Fox News, chum. It is red meat for the base. They're going to love it. It energizes them, which seems to be the goal. Does it convince people in your group, that group, the swing voters, that something bad has happened? I mean, I guess it partly depends on what they turn up. But the problem for the Republicans is they look so

to these kind of voters, they look like they're just partisans out to make a partisan show of it. And if you're a Republican who's doing investigation, you might have some interest in actually trying to do it in a way that doesn't come across that way and be taken more seriously. We'll see if any of them actually take it up on that. Having said that, I was struck by one of the things, Sarah, that a couple of your focus groupers said one reason they didn't like Hillary Clinton, they just didn't like her, was

They cited Benghazi. And that suggests that sometimes these things kind of get through to people, just got through that something bad happened with Benghazi that was Hillary Clinton's fault.

And that that tarnished her in their eyes. So that's always a danger for Biden is it may not be that something is substantively proven to be genuinely wrong, but just the preponderance of the conversation of it changes their image of him.

Yeah. Were you surprised by how much this group disliked DeSantis? Very much. Not surprised by it, but I'm very struck by that. I was. Yes. Yeah. Again, DeSantis is a base candidate at this point, and that may be enough to get the nomination, but he would have a very big challenge in the general election to change his image because he's not likable.

to these swing voters. Now, your point, though, is he is younger, and that's going to be a huge advantage if it's a DeSantis-Biden race. There's going to be a lot of people who pick him just because they see him as a new generation guy, even if they're not thrilled with his politics. But I haven't seen enough of him to know. My sense from people who do know him is that he's not exactly...

Mr. Magnetism for the middle of the road folks, right? And it would be interesting to see if he has the agility to pivot if he were actually to get the nomination.

Yeah, I mean, one of the downsides to having really high name recognition among Republican voters is he's also got pretty high name recognition among swing voters and Democratic voters who sort of don't like what they're seeing. So it's going to be harder for him to pivot out of this later to run as kind of a general. And as concerned as I am about the optics, I was struck by this group, how much they were just absolutely not for DeSantis. I will say, though, that...

This group, and I think it's because we screened for people who are going to watch the State of the Union, and I think that led us to maybe a scoach more pro-Biden of a swing voter group. So one of two things is happening. Either the speech itself made them feel more pro-Biden in that moment.

or they are a scoach more pro-Biden than your average swing voting group because they're the kinds of people who wanted to tune in to hear Biden give an hour-long speech. A lot of swing voters weren't watching the speech, right? That's right. I think that's right. And I want to tell you that what we heard last fall from swing voters about Biden was way more critical. And so just to not be all like happy talk, I want to play some Trump-Biden voters from the vault that we heard between August and October of 2022 who were literally talking about going back to Trump. Let's listen. Hmm.

Well, if it's between Biden or Trump, let's get Trump back to make things better again. He came with a lot of pros and cons, but the inflation, the prices, everything that's going on with us, we didn't have those issues with Trump. Trump made these worse, and then he went back and corrected them. This president is just making it worse. It's just like, OK, deal with it. And I hate that. It affects everyone.

I just thought the country was in a better place. It seemed like we're scrutinized now. Like everything, like I watched certain news and they said, we're going to be like in trouble with our taxes. We're going to be in trouble with everything. And I just felt better when Trump was in office. I just, I have to vote for him and my family's going to be mad at me, but I don't care.

I hope to God we don't have Trump versus Biden in 2024. But if that happens, I'm probably going to vote for Trump because I'll take a lot of the crap that Trump does, but I know I'm going to get a strong economy and, you know, and I'm going to get someone that, you know, at least is passionate. You know, it sort of brings up for me, you know, voters are like a lagging indicator on how the economy is doing right now. Like there can be a lot of news stories about how the jobs are doing really well. You get great jobs reports, core inflation is coming down, the market bouncing back some, but like,

voters still will talk about the cost of bread and eggs and housing. And like, until they are feeling it, they will not feel like this economy is working for them. And they will do this thing where they're like, it was just better under Trump. And so I'm going to go back to Trump. So here's my question to you as somebody hanging around the white house, I get the sense that part of the reason Biden's going to run again is because he thinks Trump will still be the nominee. Do you think they like want the rematch with Trump? Yeah.

Like, that's not something anybody would say out loud. They do. They definitely want the rematch. No question about it. That's definitely their approach to this is it's going to be a rematch. Biden is the Trump killer. He did it before. He can do it again. And I don't think they're sure that he can be another candidate or not because they haven't really got enough –

data to work from on that, but they do think that he can beat Trump. Now, interestingly, the argument that has been selling with Democrats about why Biden should run again is that, which is that he's the guy who can save us, quote, quote, from Trump. But that Washington Post poll, interestingly, I think,

is a danger sign for him. The Washington Post poll showed Trump leading a matchup 48-45. Now, that was margin of error. Let's just say that was an outlier. But the idea that Trump is even competitive in one of these polls, and because polls are always wrong on election day anyway –

questions whether or not Biden really has such an extraordinary advantage over Trump that he should be the only choice for the Democratic nomination. There is now another poll since then, I forgot it, you'll know it, that showed Trump down by six or seven to Biden, which would, I think, be more what the White House would expect. But he has to be able to keep up that idea that only Biden, or at least Biden, is the most likely to beat Trump in order to keep the Democrats behind him. Well, it brings up

one additional wrinkle that is flagged very often in the focus groups. And so you already heard in one of the clips earlier, there was a guy who was very concerned. He didn't name Kamala Harris, but he just said he needs a stronger VP. And so you and two of your Times colleagues are out with a story about Harris this week.

It sounds like Harris's team gave you all names to talk to for supportive quotes, but it turns out that privately they weren't so confident. And we'll put the story in the show notes. But that's a tough place to be. And I got to say, I'm going to play it for you. The focus groups have been really tough on Harris. Let's listen.

There was this press interview or anything, and somebody was asking her, can she support giving support to Ukraine? And she just smiled and giggled and laughed. I mean, that is a war-torn country, and you're just laughing. She's kind of invisible. Like, we don't really even, I think there's potential, but I think that he maybe picked her just because she was a minority woman.

Do we want to elect a president and then have him die in office? And if he runs with Harris again, and then he dies in office, and then she's our president now. If it is Harris-Trump, I know, you guys, who is going Harris? Who's going Trump?

Can we move? Not to sound like some of these other people went, oh, if Trump gets elected, I'm leaving. I mean, just going by the way Trump ended, I would go with Harris, but that's the lesser of two evils. Okay, so...

In the head-to-head, that was the moderator saying, like, who's going Harris, who's going Trump. So eight out of nine people did say they would choose Harris over Trump if there was a matchup. And one person said they would abstain. But, like, they had to think about it for a really, really long time. And so this question of age isn't just about Biden, right? Like,

It's uncouth to talk about it, but actuarial tables being what they are, who the vice president is becomes extraordinarily important in this conversation. And to have a vice president who's his own popular, she's, and I got to tell you, we in the focus groups, and I'm not just talking Republicans, I'm talking swing voters for sure, and then also a lot of Democrats, she is not popular with voters right now. Yep. No, and it's really very striking. And what your listeners here can't

C is that when your focus groupers were asked to come on here, it was the faces they made. The faces they made were just demonstrative, right? Like, oh my God, cast your oil. You've just made me eat something horrific. You just fed me sardines. They were not...

reacting in a positive way to her at all. And this is what we tried to capture in that article is that she's had such a problem establishing herself and rising to the occasion, according to fellow Democrats, that they don't have faith in her. They don't have faith that she would be a successful nominee if he were not to run for some reason, B, that she wouldn't be a liability to the

If he does, for the very reason you said, Republicans are going to make an obvious attack on him, which is if you vote for Biden in 24, you're really voting for Harris because implicitly there's a good chance he might not make it to 2029 and therefore she would become president. So she has this challenge now of at the very least not being seen as a liability for him on that ticket, even if she's not an asset. Yeah, just dig in on Harris with me for a second, because I guess-

One of the things that the focus groups say all the time, and I have internalized this as well, is like, you just don't see her that much. Like even watching the State of the Union, I was struck by like, oh, look, there she is. You know, she looks great. But they always talk about, they say she's invisible. I never see her. I don't hear her. And the Democrats who are much more, you know, they talk obviously much more favorably about

about like her possibilities. They're like, I was really excited about Harris. I really wanted to see what she was about, but I just feel like I don't see her at all. Like what is going on there? Is she being intentionally kept out of view? Is she keeping herself out of view? Like what is the problem? Well, first of all, being vice president sucks. Okay. Let's start with that. It is really the worst job in Washington. You know, Thomas Marshall, who was Woodrow Wilson's

Vice president once said that there were two brothers. One of them went out to sea and the other became vice president. Neither was ever heard from again. It's just a terrible job. And it was terrible for George H.W. Bush and Al Gore and so on and so forth. So start with that. Second, add on the burden of being a first, right? Being the first African-American vice president, the first woman vice president, the first Asian-American vice president, and the burdens and the expectations that come with that. You cannot screw up. But

And there's a double standard, I'm sure, in a lot of different ways that's probably unfair to her. It certainly feels unfair to her, I know.

Having said all that, it is reality. You're not going to change the job and you're not going to change who you are. So therefore, you have to deal with that and make it as successful as you can. She hasn't been able to do that. Now, her allies, her most sympathetic people would say Biden hasn't helped her, hasn't given her jobs that would give her much of a resonance with the public. She has seemed to crack through a little bit with her passionate defense of abortion rights that has energized the Democratic base a little bit. They do like her voice on that.

So look for her to do a little bit more of that. She now looks at this next two years as an opportunity where she may be able to do more because she won't be quite as tethered to the Senate. She's actually cast more tie-breaking votes than any vice president since John Calhoun.

because of the 50-50 tie. And now that it's not a 50-50 tie, it may be 50, 49 and a half. I don't know where you count Christian cinema these days, but it's not a 50-50 tie. And so she's telling her staff, get me out there. I want to be out on the road at least three times a week to be more visible.

But you can't be too visible because you're vice president. If you show up the president, that doesn't work for you either. So it's kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. But she hasn't made the most of it. A lot of Democrats, we don't quote any Republicans in the story. All the disappointed people in the story are Democrats, including some who helped put on the ticket and feel like she hasn't risen to the occasion. Yeah, but you just made a point I'd never thought of before, which is that if the White House is consciously keeping Biden in,

Low profile, which I heard you say in the beginning, and I didn't want to push back exactly because it's not your calculation, but there's something a little bit convenient about being like, no, no, no, our strategy is to keep him super low profile because Trump was always in your face. When actually, you know there's part of it that's like, well, he's 80 and he needs a nap and there's only so much you can run him around. But like,

I guess I've always had this thing like, well, what is the White House doing? Like, are they telling her like, no, don't make a lot of public appearances. But if there's just sort of a rule, which makes total sense or like a norm that the vice president cannot be much more visible than the president and the president is just being, you

kept not super visible on purpose for a variety of reasons, that that significantly diminishes just her ability to be out there talking to people. Right. Fewer opportunities because yes, you don't want to outshine, you never want to outshine your president if you're vice president or seem to do that. And you're right. He does keep a low profile and,

So it's kind of a tough situation in that regard for her. But having said that, I mean, you don't want to let her off the hook too much either. I mean, she has struggled to find her voice in a way that has captivated people. She has struggled to keep a staff. You can tell things with staff come and go. That's usually a sign of a problem in a politician's office. And remember when she ran for president, she didn't even get to the Iowa caucus, right? So she ran a campaign that didn't

go very well. And so all of that's on her. And so on the one hand, she has factors that are beyond her control that aren't fair. But on the other hand, you have to live with that. She's got an opportunity now, but we'll see if she can take advantage of it. So I saw an Atlantic headline that I liked. It was called Biden's Catch-24. And I'm going to admit, I just only read the headline. I didn't read the rest of the article. But what I would assume his catch-24 is, is that

He's very old, so he needs a vice president that people have a lot of confidence in. He doesn't have that right now, but he also can't swap out Kamala Harris, right? I think a lot of us who sort of game out these political decisions are like, well, you could just do that. That would solve this problem. But she'd have to sort of make that decision herself, right? Yeah. Yeah.

You can't do that. I mean, look, if she decided she wanted to leave and it was genuinely her decision or at least appear to be her decision, that would be one thing. But you cannot appear to be dumping her from the ticket for a couple of reasons. One, just historically, it hasn't worked since FDR did it, right? The only time it's happened since FDR was in Ford dumped Nelson Rockefeller, a moderate to liberal Republican in favor of Bob Dole because he was trying to fend off the concerns on the right as represented by Ronald Reagan at the time. Didn't work for him.

I think that every other president since then has thought about it, or at least their staff has thought about it. Should they get rid of Biden in 2012? Should they get rid of Cheney in 2004? It's come up. But most of the time, they conclude that it would be more damaging than it would be helpful, that it would, first of all, call into question your judgment in the very first decision you made as a presidential candidate, right? Who to pick as your number two.

And second of all, you would offend people without necessarily gaining anything. So here you literally would be potentially offending the most important constituents in your party for what gain? And it's not really clear who would get you more

then you would lose, at least in terms of enthusiasm and energy and goodwill. So that's the real trick. And I think that's probably what they mean by the catch-22. That was the catch-24. And actually, and I have no idea if that's what the article's about. It's just a title that I thought encapsulated my theory of what Biden's sort of facing here in terms of some pretty complicated dynamics. Because I got to say, as somebody who, and I'll just say this kind of as we wrap up here,

I guess I've been, the reason I said what I said on Voters Save America is that I've been kind of like, man, I just really think there's a timing issue here and that Joe Biden's been a great president and he should go out on a high. You know, Michelle Goldberg had a column about this that I was quoted in just talking about the focus groups. But I mostly agreed with it, this idea that he could step down and he could also, if it wasn't Kamala, he could signal toward a different successor.

And he could do some work in advance of that to help that person get elevated in their profile, et cetera. I don't know. I don't know what all the mechanisms would be. But all I know is it would have to be fast. It would have to be soon. And that if you sit around and wait to ensure that Donald Trump isn't the nominee, that's too late in the timeline. And so that's the other sort of catch-24 is that by the time you know whether or not it's Trump, it's too late to do anything about it other than...

Biden to run. And so I guess I'd nominally been on this idea of like, man, dude's just got to get out and got to try to tap somebody else.

But, you know, that's not super straightforward and super easy because Kamala Harris, I don't think, ends up being the person. You still have that problem to deal with. And you're then running a primary. And the one big advantage you have as an incumbent is that you're going to let the other guys tear each other apart while you stand there and look presidential. And that's a big thing to give up. And I don't think it's fair to ask you as a reporter what you think you should do. But what's your...

What analysis should he do? Or is it they're just, you got to run. That's it. Yeah. I thought there was a chance a while back that he might choose the I'm stepping down statesman-like kind of approach. He got a high because he did do better than expected in the midterm. It wouldn't be like he was being driven from office. He did say he was going to be a bridge to a new generation when he ran. And the implicit message in 2020 was I'm going to run for one term and then bring along a new generation of leadership. That's it.

That's not a bridge he's ready to cross, clearly. I think that, except that we thought that might be his calculation, that seemed to be wrong. There is no indication, not even a hint or a whisper among anybody close to him that he would consider anything other than running again. And if you think about it, I suppose that makes sense. You spend your entire life, your 80-year-old life, trying to be president of the United States, and then you're going to suddenly step aside because people tell you you're too old. No, screw that. I've been trying to get here my whole life. I got stuff to do. That's, I think, where his head is really at.

And of course, the Trump challenge, it gives him a justification. And the fact that there is no obvious successor gives him a justification. But here's the other trick. So yeah, I think you're right. If they want to groom somebody else, they're getting late in the game here because they don't have somebody who's an obvious other candidate. But what happens if he does, of course, run for re-election as we think he's going to, but something happens next year? What if something happens in the summer or fall of 2024 where suddenly he decides he can't make the race? Again, I'm not trying to be

disrespectful. But the reality is that 80 and what will be 81 next year, things happen fast at that age that you don't expect. And therefore, what is the party going to do? How do they prepare for that? Possibly they have to at least think about that.

and what their contingency plan is. And I haven't heard anything about that yet. Well, and it doesn't even have to be, he doesn't have to get like fatally sick. Oh, no. He could just like need a big surgery or you just think about how Hillary Clinton, the conspiracy theory about her being sort of sick in some way and like that time she had pneumonia and like if you were in an election cycle and

And you are running against even, let's say, Trump, but very much possibly somebody younger. And you start needing a bunch of help. Yeah, you need a bunch of procedures or something like that. That is catastrophic in a campaign environment. Well, I really appreciate you working all this through with me because it is not straightforward. It is not straightforward and yet

it feels like we also know the answer. Like there's just not really, you can game out some of these things, but it looks like, just looks like we're doing the thing. We're going to do the thing. It looks like we're doing the thing. Peter Baker, thank you for coming on the Focus Group podcast. Sure, of course. And thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of the Focus Group. Go over to iTunes and give us a rating and we will be back next week with more Focus Groups. See you guys.