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Front Burner Transcript for October 30, 2024

Host: Jayme Poisson

JAYME POISSON: Hi, I'm Jayme Poisson.

[Music: Theme]

JP: So we have now officially entered the home stretch. The 2024 U.S. election is less than a week away, if you can believe it. So we're going to set out today to take the temperature of the race and get a feel for where things stand. What are the polls saying? What are Trump and Harris pitching in these final days? What are the issues or revelations that could move things just enough to deal a blow to the other side? We're going to do all of this with my guest today, Alex Shepard. He is the senior editor at The New Republic.

[Music: Theme]

JP: Alex, hi. Thanks so much for coming on to Front Burner.

ALEX SHEPHARD: It's great to be with you.

JP: So could you put this in perspective for me? How tight is this race, according to the polls?

ALEX SHEPHARD: It's very tight. I think it's extraordinarily tight according to the polls. No one really has any sensible prediction. Anyone that I talk to that knows or has their own set of polls who kind of gives me an authoritative reading on this, I tend to mistrust. Because almost all the data that we have, both national polling and particularly in the sort of seven swing states that will almost certainly decide this election, points to a race that is hovering, you know, within one or two percentage points.

JP: And just, how much faith do you think that we should have in these polls, given how we saw things play out in 2016 and 2020? And in both cases, I believe the polls actually underestimated support for Trump. They thought Hillary would win.

SOUNDCLIP

NEWS HOST 1: Our latest tracking poll shows Hillary Clinton holding steady with a four point lead.

NEWS HOST 2: Five new polls that have come out in the last 24 hours, all with Hillary Clinton ahead. But from a point, a range of three points to 14 points...

NEWS HOST 3: Our new CNN poll of polls, that is the average of the last four polls, shows Clinton at 47 with Trump eight points behind.

NEWS HOST 4: Meanwhile, the latest national poll has Clinton up by nine, just 12 days from election day.

JP: And then they thought Biden would win by more, right. And so, how are you thinking about that this time around?

ALEX SHEPHARD: Yeah. I mean, I think that what we saw in the last two elections, where, yes, there was a slight undercounting of enthusiasm for Trump, but also that, you know, generally speaking, the results of those elections did fall within the model, just kind of in more unlikely parts of that model. But what we're seeing in this race, I think, is a little different. I think pollsters are really going out of their way to try to figure out how to accurately track Donald Trump's support. And so they're weighting polls in ways that tend to, you know, emphasize that, right. To not get it wrong in the way that they did in the last two cycles. So there has been -- we call it herding. There's been a sense that actually that a lot of the sort of more reputable pollsters are fearing missing in that kind of way. So you're not seeing a lot of outliers and you're seeing a lot of polls that just say Pennsylvania: 50-50, Michigan: 50-50, Wisconsin: 50-50.

JP: So you just mentioned three of the swing states. And I just, [laughter] for our listeners, could you just tell me a little bit more about what is happening in these handful of states that we know decide your elections. Really just being fought in, like, what, seven states?

ALEX SHEPHARD: Yeah, it's, it's basically seven states. Or it will most likely be seven states. So the big three are Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. We-- Ohio used to be part of this. We used to call it the 'Blue Wall.' These are sort of robust, Democratic-leaning, post-industrial states. Ohio is now, weirdly, one of-- has become one of the reddest states in the country, one the most reliable Republican states more recently. But, you know, the race, I think everyone... both campaigns know that this race will likely be decided by Pennsylvania. So they are spending almost all of their time just hitting Pennsylvania as hard as they can and going after Pennsylvania voters.

SOUNDCLIP

KAMALA HARRIS: From now until election day, we are going to get out the vote here in Pennsylvania.

DONALD TRUMP: A very big hello to Pennsylvania. Thank you very much. This is some little gathering we have...

ALEX SHEPHARD: There's a sort of large-- there are two large cities, but one very large city in Philadelphia. But in general, the population of these states is, you know, slightly older, slightly whiter than it is in a lot of the rest of the country. There are kind of other blocs here. So there's Arizona and Nevada, those are in the Southwest. They tend to matter a little bit less, but there are, there are more Latino voters there. They've been leaning Trump recently. And then there are these kind of other outlier states: Georgia and North Carolina. Southeastern, more socially conservative. They tend to seem a little bit out of reach for Harris as well.

JP: I wonder if you could just explain to me a little bit more why Pennsylvania matters so much.

ALEX SHEPHARD: Well, the short answer is just that it has a lot of electoral votes. It has more than the other states and it's tighter. And I think that, you know, we're seeing that as being the tipping point state. So, you know, basically you can look at this race one way, which is that Harris has been-- Michigan has been her strongest state. So she can win Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, then that's 270 electoral votes. She doesn't have to worry about any of the others. If Trump loses Pennsylvania, meanwhile -- it has such a large number of electoral votes -- he probably needs five of the other states to win. And that would also be very hard for him. So, you know, it's, in most models it's what they call the 'tipping-point state.' So whoever wins Pennsylvania becomes far more likely-- In some models, you see it as like if Trump wins it, it's 91%. And if Harris wins it, it's 96%.

JP: Wow. Okay. Okay.

[music]

JP: So now I want to talk about the final pushes that we are seeing from both campaigns as they near the finish line. And can we start with Trump and the Republicans. And how would you describe the pitch that they are making at this moment? What are the messages that you think that they're hammering and why?

ALEX SHEPHARD: So with any Trump campaign, there are always two messages. [laughter] There's kind of the one that the people behind the scenes are pushing. So in that case, it's this idea that, you know, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris destroyed the nation.

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?

ALEX SHEPHARD: They wrecked the economy, they brought about inflation, they opened the borders which have been flooded with undocumented immigrants who are selling drugs, flooding the country with fentanyl, killing your children, etc., etc.

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: I promise you we're going to end inflation very quickly. We're going to get those prices down, too. And I'll stop the invasion of criminals pouring into our country. They're criminals and they're pouring in like we've never seen.

ALEX SHEPHARD: Trump's personal message tends to focus on the last part of that. Everything kind of comes back to the sort of migrant push. And it is a lot more incoherent. So you saw kind of the danger of this approach, the sort of two-tiered approach of both kind of doing more whatever traditional campaigning, plus Trump's more improvizational thing at Sunday's rally at Madison Square Garden. Which has been kind of dominating the news cycle because of a racist joke that was made by an insult comic that for some reason was one of the warm-up acts.

SOUNDCLIP

INSULT COMIC: Cool Black guy with a thing on his head. What the hell is that, a lampshade? Look at this guy. Oh, my goodness... Wow... I'm just kidding. That's one of my buddies. He had a Halloween party last night. We had fun, we carved watermelons together. It was awesome.

ALEX SHEPHARD: One about Puerto Ricans, or Puerto Rico specifically.

SOUNDCLIP

INSULT COMIC: You know, there's a lot going on. Like, I don't know if you guys know this, but there's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah. I think it's called Puerto Rico?

ALEX SHEPHARD: And another about Latinos that were just racist and horrible and I think actually make a big difference. To go back to our earlier conversation about Pennsylvania, you know, there are 600,000 Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania, right? Like, this is, it's not a good thing to do to make those people upset.

JP: Yeah.

ALEX SHEPHARD: But the other, other aspect of this is there's just so much confidence emanating from this campaign. It's been a long time since I've seen... Romney 2012 had a similar energy, that they're just convinced that they're going to win. Their supporters are convinced that they're going to win. So a lot of it feels like this kind of jubilant victory rally that's totally premature.

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: Next Tuesday, you have to stand up and you have to tell Kamala Harris that you've done a terrible job. That Crooked Joe Biden has done a terrible job. You've destroyed our country. We're not going to take it anymore. Ka-ma-la, you're fired! Get out! Get out!

[crowd cheers]

DONALD TRUMP: You're fired!

JP: Yeah. Yeah, just, just why do you think that the confidence is there, given that the polls certainly don't seem to show it, right? I mean...

ALEX SHEPHARD: Yeah, I think some of it is just, you know, Donald Trump's primary asset as a politician is his sense of shamelessness. And that leads to, you know, this projection. And his projection has always been of himself as this, as, you know, history's greatest winner. Which has never been true. It's always been, you know, a castle built on sand. But they've, you know, he's been very successful at pushing it. And I think related to it is just that, you know, they really, the people in that campaign really do not like or respect Kamala Harris at all. I think they've underestimated her consistently throughout this campaign. And even as she's made I think several pretty successful pushes against them -- she, you know, by most accounts, won the only debate she had with Donald Trump quite handily -- they just don't take her seriously at all. So I don't think it's actually based on anything. I mean, they certainly have internal polls themselves. And I think that they just disregard the ones that show this is a close race. But they don't believe that it's a close race. But that is not built on-- or it's not based on anything.

[music]

JP: The other thing this week that's been dominating headlines is that Trump did the Joe Rogan podcast, right? And now it looks like his running mate is going to do the same. I think they spoke for... they spoke for so, so long. [laughter] It was like, a three-hour podcast. I did not listen to the whole thing. But I'm just curious, what did you glean from that, and do you think it's going to have any impact at all in the race in this final week? And I use the word 'glean' loosely.

ALEX SHEPHARD: The Trump campaign's theory of the race has been that they are making inroads with voters of colour and particularly-- and all young men. So particularly young Latino men and young Black men, but also they have an advantage with younger white men. And they've really been trying to sort of run up the score there. And you kind of don't really see a huge shift in a lot of the polls, particularly among voters of colour. There has been some inroads that Trump has made over the last three elections. And I think that this has been, their media strategy has just been to go to places where young men tend to be. And so Joe Rogan is one of those places. [JP: Mm-hmm.] As, you know, a voter outreach tool, I just don't know. I mean, the big problem with this approach is that young men are just low propensity voters. And I don't think there's anything there to really convince anyone to get on board. But what it does suggest to me is just that that's kind of their big strategy down the stretch.

JP: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And I'm curious to get your thoughts on this one, too. Sort of related, I think, to appealing to young men. Billionaire Elon Musk has been out on the campaign a lot with Trump. He's obviously thrown an enormous amount of money at his campaign, including just handing out cheques for... I think it's a million bucks, right? To registered swing voters who sign this petition that he has. I actually feel like I've seen more of Elon than of VP candidate [Alex chuckles] J.D. Vance. And so, what do you think is going on there? Do you think that when all of this is said and done, Elon will have been considered a huge asset for Trump?

ALEX SHEPHARD: I think that whatever happens here, Elon Musk will end up bearing a lot of responsibility for it. He has essentially taken over the get-out-the-vote effort. And so if you look at a state like Nevada, Elon Musk hired someone there who is a-- enormously respected, kind of old hand. They are, they seem to be doing great work in terms of early voting, which Republicans usually have trouble with. In Pennsylvania, however, you know, it's been a big question mark. And essentially, you know, when you talk to some Republican field operatives, there's a lot of concern about the way that Musk is actually running the sort of day-to-day element of the campaign. He's never done this before. And I think, you know, generally speaking, he's somebody who his, his companies have sort of lived or died based on other people he's outsourced things to. And you can see both in this race where he's spending a lot of time in Pennsylvania. And that's where the get-out-the-vote stuff is kind of going the poorest, and in places where he's handed it off to other people, it's going the best. [Jayme laughs] So, which is also, I think, true with his companies. If you look at X, that's where he spends the most time, that company is doing the worst. The other aspect of this which I think is kind of more interesting, is just, is Elon Musk a good surrogate? I mean, for me at least, just based on vibes, I can't really tell. He's a kind of awkward presence.

SOUNDCLIP

ELON MUSK: I'm not just MAGA. I'm dark gothic MAGA. Ahh! Whoaa! [giggles]

ELON MUSK: USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! [indistinct]!

ALEX SHEPHARD: And the other thing that I think... I think people on both sides of the spectrum kind of either over or underrate this, is just that, just an enormously controversial figure, right. I think there are people who think that he is Iron Man, who think that he is the most successful and brilliant person in the world. And there are other people who just think that he's kind of an idiot.

JP: Yeah. Big time. Yeah.

ALEX SHEPHARD: Or, or that he's destroying the world. And so I think that making that person your kind of, uh, your go-to guy in pivotal swing states carries some substantial risk. And just briefly, the other thing I think that this points to, which I think has been a little under-discussed, is just that Trump's stamina is way lower than it was the last two races. He's just not out there as much. He's not doing as much media. So you're seeing a lot more of Musk and Vance. You know, Vance is going on Rogan, but Vance has been kind of the Republican Pete Buttigieg, right. He's the guy who goes on cable TV and sort of fights back against the press. And, and that used to be Trump, right? Trump used to be out there. So I think what we're seeing is, you know, at 78 years old, he's slowing down a little bit more and he's relying on these two figures, Elon Musk and J.D. Vance, who just happen to be two of the most polarizing figures in American politics.

JP: Right. But not unlike Trump, too, right? [ALEX: Yeah.] You know, I think the way that you described how people think about Elon, some people think that he's Iron Man and some people think he's an idiot and a danger is probably actually the exact same way that people would describe Trump.

[music]

JP: Let's do Kamala Harris and the Democrats. How would you describe their big push to the end? What are they choosing to emphasize? What does that tell you about their strategy?

ALEX SHEPHARD: Yeah. So, I mean, it's, in some ways they're also focused on a really small number of voters. Their message down the stretch has always been focused at sort of older white voters who may not be excited to vote for a Democrat, but also really don't like Donald Trump.

SOUNDCLIP

KAMALA HARRIS: I never once asked in my career, are you a Democrat or are you a Republican? The only thing I ever asked is, how can I help you? Are you okay? And that...

[crowd cheers]

ALEX SHEPHARD: And so, you know, what we're seeing is, we've seen a bit of this sort of, um, we call it like a fascist message or warning about the dangers of Trump. But mostly, you know, it sort of boils down... essentially, you know, Donald Trump has an Enemies list and I have a To Do list.

SOUNDCLIP

KAMALA HARRIS: And I'd ask us to just imagine the Oval Office in three months. Okay. So just picture it in your head. So either it's Donald Trump sitting in there...

[crowd yelling: No!]

KAMALA HARRIS: ...stewing, stewing over his Enemies list, or me, with your help, working for you, checking off my To Do list.

ALEX SHEPHARD: That message basically makes the case that, you know, Trump is going to be this big distraction. He's this big, divisive figure, and I'm just going to not worry about that. I'm just going to sit here and kind of get stuff done. And that, I think, is aimed at mostly older voters. There hasn't been a kind of larger-- and if you look back at Joe Biden in 2020, Biden had a pretty big, robust, almost Bernie Sanders-ish economic agenda. He was talking about not only getting the country out of COVID, but about remaking the American economy, which, you know, I think to some extent he has. Harris's pitch has been much more conservative. It's been much more aimed at quelling doubts that, that some of these folks might have, particularly about her record on immigration, but also about, you know, these fears that she's some sort of communist. Which in general, she's stressing just, you know, this kind of, quote unquote, "opportunity economy," and that she would be a sort of strong force to sort of stop or at least slow the waves of undocumented immigration that we've seen over the last four years.

[music]

JP: This strategy that, you know, that they're trying to grab Republicans that don't like Trump. She's talked about, Kamala has talked about how she would have a Republican in her cabinet. But that has also drawn pushback from the more progressive elements of the Democratic base. And do you think that that could be a problem? Do you think that is a problem for them?

ALEX SHEPHARD: So down the stretch, the Harris campaign's approach has been basically to focus entirely on persuadable voters and basically bet that voters that are Democratic-leaning will not, will not flee because of it.

JP: Yeah, like they will just show up anyways.

ALEX SHEPHARD: Yes. And so there has, there's been very little outreach, particularly to the quite sizable Arab-American community in Michigan.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER: Michigan has the highest proportion of Arabs of any U.S. state, and many of them are furious. Furious with the Biden-Harris government for supporting Israel's war in Gaza and failing to stop the new war in Lebanon.

ARAB-AMERICAN WOMAN: I will vote Harris, but I will not have the energy or the audacity knock in doors on my Muslim community and tell them to, to, to vote for Harris.

ARAB-AMERICAN MAN: How can I tell the Dearborn pharmacist who lost 80 members of his family in one day to vote for the vice president?

ALEX SHEPHARD: There's been very little or at least comparably less outreach to progressives. So she's been appearing more with Liz Cheney than she has with Bernie Sanders, for instance.

SOUNDCLIP

LIZ CHENEY: I ask you to stand in truth, to reject the depraved cruelty of Donald Trump, and I ask you instead to help us elect Kamala Harris for president.

LIZ CHENEY: Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris.

NEWS HOST 5: A fixture running Republican administrations as chief of staff and then running their war policies as defense secretary and vice president, most famously during 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed, this news would have been unheard of 10 or 15 years ago.

ALEX SHEPHARD: They, they believe that they are sort of, the case that they're making is so heavily micro-targeted. And it is very, very data driven. They know who these people are and where they live and, and how they might, you know, how they will likely vote. In contrast, I think, to the approach that we're talking about with Trump, where they're just kind of guessing that young men might be into this. And that is guiding their approach. Now, that may very well work, and especially in an election that will probably be decided by, let's say, less than 100,000 votes. You know, you don't need to go very far. But, you know, that works the other way too. And I think, you know, there are also... you know, to go back to those Arab-American voters in Michigan, for instance. You know, that's a state that she's been doing very well in. But, you know, if they get that wrong, then -- and the Liz Cheney stuff, it's been heavily targeted by, you know, Musk-backed PACs and super PACs, and to a lesser extent by Trump and Vance as well -- then, you know, this will go down as a disaster. So I think, you know, it's a, it's a risk. It doesn't feel that way because, uh, because of how conservative the approach is or how cautious the approach is. But, you know, to an extent, it just speaks to the lack of time that Harris has had as a nominee, right. She's only been the Democratic nominee for 100 days. She didn't have this sort of normal grace period you have as a candidate to kind of win over the, the sort of further flank in your party, particularly progressives here. She just had to go right into a persuasion campaign. And that campaign has involved, you know, persuading older white voters, you know, in three states and one state in particular.

[music]

JP: I watched Michelle Obama's speech this week in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I was just also interested to hear what you think about that speech in general, specifically the part where she really lays out the case for abortion rights. And she actually appeals to men quite a bit.

SOUNDCLIP

MICHELLE OBAMA: Your girlfriend could be the one in legal jeopardy if she needs a pill from out of state or overseas. Your wife or mother could be the ones at higher risk of dying from undiagnosed cervical cancer because they have no access to regular gynecological care. Your daughter could be the one too terrified to call the doctor if she's bleeding during an unexpected pregnancy.

JP: What does that tell you about what the Democrats are trying to do in these final days as well?

ALEX SHEPHARD: I think that you've seen both Obamas be used as surrogates in really interesting ways. And these are two of-- I mean, for Democrats, they're, they're practically godlike figures. But they're, for all voters, really very, very popular figures. You know, Michelle Obama will never run for president. But, you know, if she did, you know, any, every poll basically says that she could beat anyone in the country. And the way that they've deployed them is as, um, as, as the people who make the riskier appeals, right. So for Michelle Obama, that was really laying out the case for abortion. And Democrats, you know, are much more comfortable talking about abortion than they ever have been after the repeal of Roe versus Wade in 2022. But they still, you know, there's still a sense of discomfort, I think, in really making the full-throated case for abortion with fewer exceptions. And, you know, Harris has dodged every time she's been asked, like, when should the cut-off be? She's dodged it. And so Michelle and Barack have been, both Michelle and Barack Obama have been used to really, like, aggressively make that case. And I think also, relatedly, to kind of shame voters in ways that Kamala and Tim Walz feel uncomfortable doing so. You know, Michelle Obama's case for abortion was aimed at men. And I think that was because she can get away with it.

SOUNDCLIP

MICHELLE OBAMA: So I am asking y'all from the core of my being to take our lives seriously. Please...

[crowd cheers]

ALEX SHEPHARD: You know, Barack Obama has talked both to Arab-American voters and to Black men in particular, you know, in a way that is aimed at kind of shaming them.

SOUNDCLIP

BARACK OBAMA: If you're a Muslim American and you're upset about what's happening in the Middle East, why would you put your faith in somebody who passed a Muslim ban and repeatedly suggested that somehow you weren't part of our American community?

BARACK OBAMA: We have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighbourhoods and communities as we saw when I was running. Now, I also want to say that that seems to be more pronounced with the brothers.

ALEX SHEPHARD: But I think that that is a case that, you know, they're kind of using the appeal that they have to make that case. And Kamala Harris, you know, can't do that.

JP: But there's been pushback, right, that maybe that's not the right strategy, that kind of finger-wagging, shaming strategy. Do we know right now if there has been an Obama bump at all? Because they really are mashing the Obama, hey? Like...

ALEX SHEPHARD: [laughs] Yeah.

JP: They're out there a lot. Yeah.

ALEX SHEPHARD: Yeah. I mean, look, the Obama button is their, the Democrats' most potent button [laughter] to push, right? Like--

JP: Hit it, hit it, hit it!

ALEX SHEPHARD: Yeah. It's that, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, you know, and you just kind of... you know, with a week to go in the election, you just mash them as hard as you can. I think they may not have anticipated the amount of pushback that they've gotten, and I think... to an extent, I think that the Democratic Party still operates in an older media environment than the Republican Party does. So, that type of messaging appeal 15 years ago, you might have gotten one or two people on cable news saying, well, I don't know about this. But now there are 80 podcasts, and I can listen to Charlamagne tha God talk to The New Yorker's David Remnick about how he doesn't agree with that approach.

SOUNDCLIP

DAVID REMNICK: What did you think of Obama's speech?

CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD: I thought that--

DAVID REMNICK: He seemed to piss a lot of people off.

CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD: Yeah, I didn't, I didn't like it. Because I just, like I said, I just think that, you know, pointing the finger at Black men when we are the second largest voting bloc for the Democrats all the time, is ridiculous. And we're looking at polls...

ALEX SHEPHARD: That's, I think, the risk there. That being said, I do think that they think that there is an appeal there because of the messenger, right. That I think there is some data backing this up. Because they're saying, look, we need somebody to go out and make this case, and we're going to have our most powerful people do it because they won't get as much pushback for making it.

[music]

JP: So this is something that you have alluded to throughout this conversation, but I think it might be helpful to just ask you straight up. Because somebody has to lose here. I say that with the caveat that it's not clear that Donald Trump will accept that loss. We just did a whole episode about the Stop the Steal 2.0 campaign that is very much in motion. But in theory, somebody has to lose here. And let's say Trump does lose. Just, as somebody who spends so much time immersed in this world, what do you think his biggest liability will have been?

ALEX SHEPHARD: I think, well, his biggest liability is the one that people consistently overlook, which is that he is the most unpopular figure in American politics. And voters, he's off-putting to just an enormous number of voters and he does nothing to try to reach those people. I think, you know, he saw a rare favourability bump that's mostly stuck around after the July assassination attempt, but that was only four points. You know, he remains a kind of uniquely hated figure in politics. And he can't, he will not do anything to try to change that. And I think the Republican Party has been remade in his image. So, you know, in 2016 and even in 2020, I think there were Republican or sort of right-leaning voters who could still be persuadable based on some of the people around him. That there were kind of, you know, older hands that were familiar or at least that reminded these voters that, you know, this guy would be kept in check. And the campaign that he's run this year has been one that is completely unbridled, even by his own standards. And, you know, the big bet that they have made going down the stretch is that, you know, that that will be appealing to a larger number of voters. And I just am not sure that that's the case at all. And I think, you know, when I talk to people that are a part of that campaign, and certainly when you talk to people in the sort of crowds that are attending his rallies, you feel that, you know, it's not really based on anything. It's, it's just a vibe. And that kind of vibes-based approach to politics, I think, has real and pretty grave limits. And, you know, this is by far the most extreme political campaign in modern American history.

JP: And then what about the Democrats? What about Kamala Harris's campaign, which has also been called the vibes-based campaign by some people? You know, when this is all said and done, if she loses next week, what do you think people will say, like, did it? You know, was there a moment? What were the big errors? You know, what do you think?

ALEX SHEPHARD: Yeah. I mean, one way of looking at her campaign is just that I think she's made almost the best of a pretty bad situation. That Joe Biden, who was the presumptive nominee of the party, you know, there was almost a 0% chance that he was going to be re-elected. Just voters had already decided that he was not capable of doing the job. And, you know, for a campaign that is only 100 days old, I think she's done a pretty decent job. That being said, you know, it's also a campaign that I think has showcased her limitations. I think she has not really been able to ever kind of conclusively make a sort of larger appeal or message. It's still not entirely clear what the first thing she would do if she was elected president. And I think that, you know, if she were to lose -- despite the fact that, again, I think that if it's a close election, then that is kind of an accomplishment in and of itself, given the pretty enormous constraints around her -- I think there will be a, a civil war essentially within the Democratic Party. And that, I think there will be a -- despite the fact that she is running on the most kind of conservative immigration platform that a Democrat has run on in at least 60 years -- there will be, I think, an effort to push the party even further to the right on immigration. I think there will be larger questions about their sort of approach to economics. And I think for progressives, I think they will reasonably say, well, you know, they-- Kamala Harris never made any outreach to us. She never tried to answer the question of how she would deal with Israel differently. She never did outreach to Bernie Sanders. I just think that you'll see an enormous reckoning with the party.

JP: Okay. Alex, this is great. Really appreciate it. I know you're super busy right now, so thank you so much for taking the time.

ALEX SHEPHARD: Thank you. Appreciate it.

[Music: Theme]

JP: All right. That's all for today. I'm Jayme Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.

The state of the U.S. presidential race - Transcript

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