First and foremost, thank you to our podcast listeners, our substack readers, and those deep multimedia intellectuals who do both. 250 podcast episodes is a lot of talking, a lot of togetherness, a lot of guests, and the honest-to-goodness truth is that we love every minute. Thank you for giving us this great opportunity. Aaaaannnnndddd….. on to the election.
To celebrate our milestone we asked the inimitable Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report and our own AEI political guru Matt Continetti to join us for a live WTH episode to talk 2024. For those of you who remember Jaws 2, the motto for that flick really sums 2024 up for me: “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water….” Chomp. And Amy and Matt didn’t disagree. But they did have some keen and surprising insights. Spoilers ahead:
With the fake $100 Marc offered for a bet on the winner, both Amy and Matt took Trump for the 2024 win. Then again, it wasn’t real money.
The CW for the last year has been that the House flips next year; neither Amy nor Matt think that’s even close to a done deal. In fact, it’ll be easier for the Rs to keep it than the Ds to flip it.
The third-party loons are a strong factor that can lose the election for Biden.
Another thing that’s becoming clear: Approval ratings matter less and less. Biden can’t break out of his worst-in-show ranking, and yet most of the midterm and off-season races have gone to his party. Ditto, Trump is still Trump, the second least popular president, plus 91 counts and trials and endless efforts to violate gag efforts and be imprisoned, etc. But he’s still the GOP’s man.
Strangely, however, there’s some thinking that having Donald Trump locked up in a courtroom is a little like having Joe Biden locked in his basement — the less you see, the more you like. Not crazy, actually. But both our experts believe a conviction in a case could hurt Trump. Will it matter? Who the hell knows?
Here’s the bottom line: It’s April, and anyone seriously betting their fake $100 is nuts. Anything can and, knowing the 2020s, will happen. Also, we in DC tend to talk about a national race. However, the battle for the White House isn’t national, it’s state-by-state. Ask yourself these questions:
Who will DJT choose for Veep? (Matt had a dark horse…)
Will black men really stick with Trump? How about Hispanics?
Will Israel/Gaza matter? Can Biden win Michigan?
Will the economy still be in the crapper? Will the immigration crisis persist?
Answer those questions, and you may have a sense of who will win come November. Stick a name in the comments and we’ll send the winners a mug (if we remember — November is so far off).
And truly, really, thank you for being along for the ride.
HIGHLIGHTS
Amy, how are you looking at the 2024 election right now?
AW: This is how I look at it: It is true that Joe Biden is much less popular than he was in 2020 and his job approval rating is lower than where Donald Trump was at this point in 2020. Not by a ton, but say Donald Trump was at 44, 45, he's at 40.
You mentioned that Biden is less popular than Trump during his presidency, how will that affect the election?
AW: We know that Biden is less popular. Donald Trump isn't necessarily seen more favorably. People didn't suddenly go like, "Oh, I guess I like him now." But there's this nostalgia for the Trump presidency. Whatever their vision was of what 2020 was or 2019 or 2018, it was a time where they feel the economy was better, things seemed more stable. It's grass is always greener sort of situation. So it's not that Donald Trump himself they are reevaluating. It's the Donald Trump era in terms of their own economic lives or the economic livelihood of the country.
And so the question is, will that nostalgia last after the Biden campaign spends 50 gajillion dollars reminding people not just of what the Trump presidency was like, but what it will look like if there is a Trump 2.0? That's the gamble. That's what the Biden campaign believes will be the deciding place that will start to move these numbers back to a more normal place. They see that. And by normal place, meaning that the numbers we're seeing for Trump right now are basically his ceiling and that that's fine. He can be at 46, 47, 48. That's where he was in those swing states in 2020 and in 2016, but we can surpass that, except then you have these third-party candidates. So he can win, Trump can, without getting a majority of the vote.
Matt, what are you paying attention to for the 2024 election?
MC: Look at [the election] from a different angle. Look at it from the angle of what's happening in the seven states that will decide the election. And there, well, Trump has a little bit more of an advantage because […] the seven states that will decide the election, primarily the states like Nevada, have been most affected by the rise in prices during Biden's presidency and have seen the least wage gains during Biden's presidency. And Trump's lead is larger in these swing states than it is nationally.
And then you look at it from the angle too of the multi-candidate race. And that introduces a whole other element of certainty. So the real question, just with the metrics I've laid out, is do these third-party candidates make it onto ballots or not? If they are on these swing state ballots in November, and if individually or combined, they poll above about 3%, I don't see how Joe Biden wins the election. Because if you look historically at the third-party candidacies going back to 1912, as soon as an independent candidate or a third-party reaches about 3%, it's terrible for the in-party. And it just so happens that the in-party right now is President Joe Biden.
Will third-party candidates be bad for Biden if we have two quasi-incumbents running?
MC: We're not going to know until election day, but I think [RFK Jr.] and Cornel West, they're clearly making a play for the progressive base that is dissatisfied with Biden on any number of issues, whether you want the more solidaristic liberalism with some kind of conspiracism that RFK Jr. presents, or if you just want the far-left progressivism that Cornel West represents.
If you look at RFK Junior's vice presidential selection, Ms. Shanahan is not a figure of the right in any way. And if you look at Cornel West, Professor West's selection, wow. She's quite a character. And then of course Dr. Jill Stein who supped with Vladimir Putin in 2016. Together, all of them, I think, are going to draw from the crunchy Left, which thinks that there's no difference between the parties and probably might be immune to $100 million plus that the Biden campaign is going to spend reminding people how much they dislike Donald Trump.
Amy, what does Biden’s voter coalition look like?
AW: I think this has been the challenge for Biden for the entirety of his presidency, and quite frankly for the Democratic Party for the last eight years, is that they are the anti-Trump coalition. Their coalition has been put together, not really by issues or ideology, but by we stand against Donald Trump and who he is and whatever Trumpism is. And the people showing up to vote are voting against Trump more than Biden.
And that's still the case today. I went and I looked back in NBC polling from 2016. Most people who were voting for Donald Trump in 2016 said, "Well, I'm voting against Hillary. I don't know about this Trump guy, but I can't stand her." By the time we got to 2020, 75% of Trump voters were like, "No, I'm with Trump." The same has not happened with Biden. He still only has 35, 40-ish percent saying, "Yeah, I'm showing up because I want to vote for Biden." The majority are still anti-Trump. So if Trump's not the center of the conversation, those voters start to get distracted, and then issues that divide the coalition, like Israel, become a much bigger deal.
So Trump has to be at the center if you're the Biden campaign, because that is the energy for your coalition.
Matt, if Biden voters are really anti-Trump voters, does Biden’s approval rating even matter?
MC: I went back to one of my favorite quotes of the past month, which was Biden's campaign advisor, Jen O'Malley Dillon. Ran the '20 campaign, worked in the White House. Now she's working Delaware as part of the '24 campaign. And she said that "I used to believe that job approval rating was correlated with election outcomes. But I'm not so sure of that anymore."
And a lot of the Biden campaign's theory of the case rests on whether these numbers no longer have any meaningful relationship to one another. And the truth is there is some evidence to suggest that they don't have a meaningful relationship. Biden has been unpopular since the summer of 2021. And yet other than the off-year elections in '21 where Republicans scored this great upset with Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, Democrats have been over-performing Biden's approval rating.
What are the issues each candidate is running on?
MC: Trump has more issues in his favor. Inflation, border, crime. Biden has two issues. Abortion, Trump, slash democracy, slash J6.
AW: January 6th, yeah.
MC: Trump has more issues, but what I've seen in the election returns since '21 is that Biden's issues move more votes.
What is Donald Trump promising to do in his second term?
MC: I did some thinking and some Googling, and I really know only four things.
He's going to pardon the J6 “hostages.” I used air quotes, for the podcast audience. He's going to launch the greatest deportation program that America's ever known. He's going to impose a 10% tariff on imports globally, and much higher tariffs on Chinese imports. And he is not going to do anything to touch social security, Medicare. And he will leave abortion to the states for now, though I think he'll end up changing his position by election day.
Does Trump have an Israel policy?
MC: He gave the interview to Hugh Hewitt last week where basically Hugh was desperate for Trump to clarify his position, and gave him an opportunity. And Trump said [Israel has] got to finish the job because [it] is experiencing terrible public relations. Now, I happen to agree with both of those things. I think they're empirically true, but it's not a grand strategy for the Middle East, and it's a reminder of what Trump cares about most above all. How are things playing on TV?
And so he's watching television and he's seeing again and again the news coverage of the situation in Gaza, and he's saying this is terrible publicity for Israel. And so Israel needs to go and finish the war so the region can return to some type of normalcy.
Why isn’t Trump articulating what his policies will be if he returns to the Oval Office?
MC: Trump is not thinking about policy. He wants to give as much room to himself as possible to maneuver should he become president again. And his true imperatives are almost entirely focused, I think, on changing the government, revenge for the prosecutions against him that are now threatening his personal liberty, and then changing the nature of the bureaucracy so that he won't be stymied by the deep state in a second term.
Amy, people rarely vote because of foreign policy. However, Israel is proving to be a big issue for Biden. Will Israel and the uncommitted votes matter in November?
AW: We don't know. They will matter, and maybe they won't matter. It's been clear for a long time, the numbers that you all have cited since we started about the dissatisfaction within the Democratic base for Biden. Whether that is the deciding factor for them to show up and vote third party, to stay home, or to vote for Donald Trump…. Now, I think most of those folks know that they're not voting for Donald Trump. I do think the staying home is a very big factor, and potentially throwing a vote to a third party, though I don't think... You're not seeing RFK Jr. lean in on this.
If you really wanted to be the, "I'm going to win over these voters who have skepticism about Biden, and I'm the progressive candidate." He's not that candidate. I was just listening to Sarah Longwell interview Astead Herndon from the New York Times about the interview that Astead did with RFK Jr. And his point was, RFK Jr. cares really about one thing, and it's the vaccine issue. That is his whole campaign. All this other stuff is not that interesting to him.
Matt, should Biden be pandering to a small anti-Israel portion of the electorate in Michigan when doing so will alienate other voters?
MC: Of the three states in the so-called Blue Wall, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania that Donald Trump won in 2016, first Republican to do so since 1988, then loses in 2020. Michigan is where Trump has been performing the best. Wisconsin is very close, Pennsylvania, very close as well. Michigan, Trump has a little bit more of a lead, so Biden has to do everything he can to win Michigan.
When you're in a situation as a politician where you've already really turned off the independent voters and you're losing support in the middle, well, you're going to have to shore up your base. The worst thing that can happen to you is that you also lose your base. Then you're really stuck with no one.
In fact, that's what happened to George W. Bush at the end of his presidency. He had lost the independent voters and then some of his moves between immigration and the financial crisis, they all abandoned him in the Republican base, and he was left with a very low approval rating.
Biden doesn't want to be there. He's already, as you said, extremely unpopular. He's already presided over an increase in the price level. The only president in recent times who has presided over a similar increase in the price level is Jimmy Carter, one-term president. So he has to do something to retain the base or at least prevent that part of the electorate from deciding, you know what, Biden is helping Israel commit genocide and Trump — not the biggest supporter of the Muslim community — I'm just going to stay home on election day.
How will Trump’s trials affect his campaign?
MC: The New York Hush Money trial starts, and Trump could be in a situation where he is basically off the campaign trail for four days a week.
Can Trump make up for lost time by giving up a round of golf or two?
MC: There's some places he won't go, right? He won't give up the round of golf. So I do think it presents a challenge for him campaigning. On the other hand, it will prevent him from doing things that might remind the median voter of the unsavory parts of his presidency while reinforcing among his own voters and people who are not necessarily in his base, who also believe this, that he is the subject of political prosecution. That he has been railroaded by the Biden Justice Department and by progressive prosecutors. And so he has earned, I think, quite a bit of sympathy because of his legal situation. And the trials will remind the people who feel such sympathy of their connection to him.
AW: The interesting part too is you have a president who can't really... either doesn't want to or believes he can't really lean in on this. If you said to me, hi, you're running a campaign, Marc, and the person you're running against has 91 indictments or four counts of 91 indictments, what do you want to talk about on the campaign? You'd be like, aren't we going to talk about the indictments? Aren't we going to talk about the fact that while I'm out here doing the presidenting, my opponent is literally in a courtroom?
Don't you think that's what you'd want to talk about? But because it is so unpredictable where that goes, it does help him, I think, raise money, raise attention from his base and support from his base.
Amy, much of Congress is also up for re-election. What will happen in Congress come November?
AW: So if you look at our House readings of the Cook Political Report, you'll see there are only 22 races that we consider toss-ups. So of 435 races probably comes down to about 25, when all is said and done. For Democrats to win just the barest majority, they have to win about 70% of those. For Republicans to hold, they have to win 35%. So it's easier, 35%. But to your point, you can also mess up, right? It's like it's kicking the extra point. Can you miss export? Absolutely. Do it all the time.
So candidate quality, fundraising, what's going on on the top of the ticket in your state? A lot of these battleground House districts are taking place outside of Battleground Presidential or Senate, New York, California, Oregon. To me, my favorite district may be Nebraska 2, with the one electoral college vote. So lots of money going into Omaha and a very competitive House race.
So I do think the House is an absolute toss-up. I think it is way too soon to say, oh yeah, Democrats have it. I don't feel that way at all. The Senate is just to say decidedly uphill for Democrats is putting it politely. Just think of it this way, Joe Manchin's open seat in West Virginia, it's going to Republicans. So let's just get that out of the way. So we now have a 50/50 Senate. If Trump wins, it's done. The majority flips.
For Democrats to hold the Senate, Biden has to win, and they have to hold seven very competitive states, including Ohio, Montana, that Trump will win maybe by double digits, but certainly by high single digits in Ohio. And then also hold on to Michigan and Arizona and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. So could it happen?
Matt, it feels like no one wanted the Trump-Biden rematch, so how come they are our nominees?
MC: It's not quite true to say no one wanted these two candidates. There were a lot of Republicans who wanted Donald Trump. They were slightly depressed after the '22 midterm result, and after the low point of many low points where he was dining with two antisemites at Mar-a-Lago in November of 2022. But because of the indictments, he began to regain strength and the MAGA movement, the Make America Great Again movement is very powerful. So they wanted Trump to be the nominee.
With Biden it's just very hard to unseat an incumbent president. The choice is really up to him. Would he be like a Lyndon Johnson and announce that because of his age and because he wanted to transition to a new generation of leadership, he would only serve one term? He chose not to do that. Whether it's still possible to make a switch, I am very skeptical.
I think these are the two nominees, and this is the vice presidential nominee on the Democratic side. So on the Republican side, I have no idea who he's going to pick. I don't think he has any idea who he's going to pick, because from what I understand, everyone who comes into contact with him is asked by Donald Trump, who should I pick for Vice President? Who do you think I should pick for Vice President? Who do you think I should pick? There are a lot of different choices. There's everything from Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. Trump has always wanted to capture a sizable portion of the African-American vote. Black men in particular, as Marc was saying, seemed much more receptive to voting for Donald Trump than they have for a Republican candidate in 60 years. That's a possible avenue. He is being told by the MAGA forces that JD Vance of Ohio would make the great pick. I was picked up on this by rereading an op-ed that his advisor, Kelly Anne Conway wrote earlier this year. She kind of laid out all the different options.
There was only one choice who appeared multiple times in her op-ed, and that was Marco Rubio. I thought that was very interesting. On the other hand, Kelly Anne Conway was also telling Donald Trump to embrace a limit with exceptions on abortion at the federal level. So his position would be defined by him and not by the Democrats, and he rejected her advice.
So maybe he won't be listening to Kelly Anne on the day that he chooses his vice president, in which case it's not Marco. I do have one dark horse though, and that is Glenn Youngkin. I think that if he chose Youngkin, it would unify the party in a way that would be very productive for Donald Trump. The only problem would be he doesn't like sharing the spotlight very much, and also Youngkin is taller than he is.
Who will the Nikki Haley voters vote for?
MC: Well, I think one, the first question we have to ask is who are the Nikki Haley voters? So Nikki Haley attracted about a fifth of the vote in the places where she did the best. Even after she dropped out, she was still pulling about 20%. The question is, who are these people? Are they Republican voters or are they independent voters, or even Democrats who were just so anxious to vote against Donald Trump that they will participate in Republican primaries in order to do so?
Regardless of what the breakdown of that figure is, I do think it presents some challenges for Trump. Nikki Haley did best in the places where Trump is weakest and that is the suburbs, and matters among moderate voters, moderate Republican voters, and more centrist voters. And the fact is, and this is something that Amy and I've been talking about throughout Trump's presidency and beyond, he does not care about those voters at all.
He does nothing ever to try to appeal to those voters. With Trump, it is you are with me, and if you are with me, then I will reward you, but if you're not with me, I'm not going to... Outreach is not really in Donald Trump's vocabulary. And so it's a real question where they fall in November. They may be part of this large mass of voters that just looks at the choices and says, "I'm not participating in this. Let somebody else figure it out. I'm going to stay home." If that happens, it could hurt both candidates in all honesty, because usually that's where elections are decided, in the suburbs.
AW: For Biden, a Trump 2020 voter who decides to stay home is essentially a vote for Biden, so that's fine. Whether they show up for him or they stay home is a big deal. But I think it was Nate Cohn over at the New York Times — I also saw somebody else digging into the Georgia voter file after the Georgia Primary. Remember Nikki Haley had dropped out by then, but she was still getting this phantom vote, like 18, 19%. Some of them have voted before she dropped out, but when you sort of match up who those voters are who voted for Nikki Haley or showed up and voted in the primary, a lot of people who showed up and voted were people who voted in the 2020 Democratic primary, or who we know that it's not that they were plants necessarily, this idea like, oh, they went in just to embarrass Trump. No.
And maybe they still consider themselves Republican, but not a Trump Republican. So there is still a slice of that electorate out there, and I think the gamble that Trump has always been making is that he can win without those swing voters, because he's going to pick up the voters who don't traditionally show up for other politicians, but who show up for him, which we saw in 2016 and in 2020.
And now this debate about the realigning of Latino and Black voters. He's going to win over enough from those groups that he doesn't need that swing vote. But again, those voters are consistent voters. They're voters that show up election after election. You can be more confident in that they're going to show up. You're not going to necessarily be confident that those who don't normally... I was reading, for example, this... I guess it was the Wall Street Journal poll today or yesterday about Black voters who are defecting from Biden. But when they interviewed one of them, he is like, "Things were better when Trump was there and Biden is a disappointment. Mr. So-and-so did not vote in 2020."
You both have $100, it’s election day, who are you putting your money on?
MC: I just go for the upside. So it's a $100 on Trump. If I win, maybe I'll make a little bit of money and if I lose, it's all fake money anyway.
AW: That is an excellent way to do that. Look, Trump is ahead right now, and I don't think that's a mirage or that polling is broken or whatever. This is right now about Joe Biden and there's this nostalgia for Trump. I wouldn't put whatever. I'd like that it's fake money, so sure, why not do that? But I would certainly give him the advantage right now. To me, it's really like, all right, once we get into this thing, though once the campaign really starts, and when does the campaign really start? Is this race shifting at all to be more about the former incumbent than the current?
Read the full transcript here.
SHOWNOTES
Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on the response to Trump’s escalating violent rhetoric (PBS, March 18, 2024)
Amy Walter: Take Presidential Primary Votes Seriously, but Not Literally (Cook Political Report, February 27, 2024)
Amy Walter on Meet the Press (NBC, September 10, 2023)
Amy Walter: Biden Hasn’t Converted Anti-Trump Voters to Pro-Biden Voters (Cook Political Report, March 14, 2024)
Continetti: The Four Questions of 2024 (Commentary, March 19, 2024)
Continetti: New Voters Witnessing Lawfare Being Used “Think That The Whole System Is Rigged” (Real Clear Politics, March 19, 2024)
Continetti: America’s Political Realignment Is Real (National Review, March 16, 2024)
Continetti: How to Think about a Two-Incumbent Election (National Review, January 5, 2024)
Continetti: The Left of the Right (Commentary, October, 2023)
Special counsel files brief urging Supreme Court to reject Trump's immunity claim (ABC, April 8, 2024)
Senate GOP divided over how tightly to embrace Trump (The Hill, March 7, 2024)
Trump needs Haley voters to win back the White House (Washington Post, March 6, 2024)
Fewer Voters Think Trump Committed Crimes, Polls Show (New York Times, March 5, 2024)
Bloomberg/Morning Consult swing state poll hints at Biden comeback (Axios, March 26, 2024)
Majority of Biden’s 2020 Voters Now Say He’s Too Old to Be Effective (New York Times, March 3, 2024)
Biden Knows He’s Losing (National Review, March 2, 2024)
‘We all have concerns’: Hill Democrats see flawed Biden campaign (RollCall, January 16, 2024)