From Bloomberg News and iHeartRadio. It's the big take. I'm Westksova today. The issues that will decide who wins the White House in twenty twenty four. Pretty much the moment Joe Biden made it official that he is indeed running for a second term, the White House and the rest of Washington, not to mention a certain ex president down in Florida, immediately switched into full campaign mode.
Now we've just got to keep it going, finish the job. We just remember who we are. We are the United States of America. There's nothing, nothing, nothing beyond our capacity. Nothing.
If we work together to win the election, Biden or his Republican opponent, whether it's Donald Trump again to Governor Rond De Santis or someone else, will likely need to peel away at least some voters from the other side. That, of course, is no easy task, but as dug in as most people are for one party or the other these days, there are quite a few big issues at stake this time around that have the potential to shake some people loose. Issues like abortion.
Politically, that's turned out to be something of a poison chalice.
Immigration, The Republican Canada will certainly make immigration a top issue. They've used it for years as a cudgel against Joe Biden.
And LGBTQ plus rights.
The line that got the biggest standing innovation from the room, and this surprised me. It got to the whole idea of gender identity and kids and the room went nuts.
That's Bloomberg's Joshua Green, Nancy Cook, and Jordan Fabian. They too are gearing up for the campaign and they're sorting through these top of mind issues that will dominate the next election. Nancy, at the moment, it looks like either Donald Trump or Ron De Santis will be the Republican nominee for president next year, though of course that could certainly change. It's pretty early, and both of them are making the case why they should get to go up
against Joe Biden. But let's start with Biden himself, because right now the attention is on him after his big announcement, and he has to make the case to voters why they should give him a second term. And there doesn't seem to be a lot of excitement about Biden himself, even from Democrats.
I think what's motivating Democrats at this point is not wanting to see Trump, you know, not wanting to see a Ron de Santis figure there. They think Biden's fine. I don't think that they feel like he necessarily deserves a second term. And also there's huge concerns about his age. He just turned eighty, and I feel like people are fairly worried about that.
And here's what President Biden recently had to say about that.
With regard to age, I can't even say, I guess how old I am. I can't even say the number.
It's done register with me.
But the only thing I can say is that one of the things that people are going to find out, they're going to see a race, and they're going to judge whether or not I have or don't have it. I respect them taking a hard look at it. I take a hard look at it as well. I took a hard look at it before I decided to run. And I feel good. I feel excited about the prospects, and I think we're on the verge of really turning the corner and away. We haven't a long time.
But he really has no democratic challenger, so that's who it's going to be on the democratic side, Jordan.
Why aren't people excited about Biden. He's actually done quite a lot. Like He's done a lot of the things that he promised he was going to do and that people voted for him to do.
He did accomplish a lot in his first two years in office, arguably even more than Barack Obama did in his first two years. But the factors, and Nancy pointed this out, that remains a huge concern not only for Biden's physical health and well being and its ability to serve a full eight years in the White House, but there's an appetite among Democratic activists as well who I've spoken to. They just want a generation of new leadership, not even just for twenty twenty four, but going forward.
Their concerns about the viability of figures on the bench to become the party standard bearer and beat back either Donald Trump or trump like figures in the Republican Party who are trying to pull the country in a far right direction.
I think the other big factor is that Americans, when you look at Poles, still feel like the economy is heading in a bad direction. Inflation is historically high, whether it's filling up your car or buying groceries, Prices are frustratingly more than it feels like they should be than it was pre pandemic, and Biden is the president who has presided over all of that. Things have gotten somewhat better, but they haven't gotten a whole lot better, and so
I think that there's an undercurrent of dissatisfaction. And you see that reflected everywhere, from his overall approval rating, which hit an all time low in the most recent Gallup poll of thirty seven percent, to just basic questions about right track wrong track in the direction of the economy, which historically have been a pretty good indicator of a president's chances at reelection.
I think the best thing that Biden.
Has going for him is a likelihood that he's probably going to wind up running against a Republican who may be even more unpopular with the public than he is, and that'll be perhaps the saving grace.
I also think, just to add to that, at this White House, one of the criticisms that I've heard about them is that they're just really bad at selling President Biden's accomplishments. He has done a ton of things. There's an infrastructure package, the Chips Bill, we held NATO together when Russia invaded Ukraine, like he has a really long
list of accomplishments. There was a Washington Post poll this fall which I thought was so stunning that said over sixty percent of Americans could not name a single accomplishment from the Biden agenda. And I think that just shows that, you know, Americans are not really sort of tuned into what he's doing. And that's partly a function of the
media environment has changed after Trump. You know, Americans are not sort of following politics as closely as they were when Trump was in the White House and tweeting everything out all the time. And I think some people like that. But the other problem is is this White House has not done a great job of selling the American people on what they've done, and that will be a challenge for them as they campaign.
It's interesting because one of Biden's famous complaints about Barack Obama was that Obama thought everyone should just know how good he is an edgy thing that he's done, and he didn't like to sell it. And Biden, as Vice president was always pushing Obama, like, out your accomplishments. Why hasn't Biden been able to do that?
It's not for lack of trying.
They've done a ton of events and I've covered a lot of them where they're talking about all of the legislation that Nancy just mentioned. And he's also traveled to a lot of states where they're opening new factories or new plants to make semiconductors, and he's he's taking credit for it. But the problem is that Biden's message, just for whatever reason, whether it's the media environment or Biden as a person, doesn't seem to break through with the public.
And so whatever he's putting out there, it's not being absorbed.
But they need to.
Confront that problem and fix it so that not only can they set up a contrast with the Republican candidate, but they can actually have a positive message to sell to the public to convince them that he deserves four more years in the White House?
Is this partly Josh? Where Republicans go with the gut, Like if you look at Donald Trump, he goes after people's grievances they're anger, he gives them someone to blame, whereas Democrats want to talk about the details of their policies and people just kind of tune out.
I think that's part of it.
I mean, I've always thought, not really have pull numbers to back this up, that Democrats and Independence really elected Joe Biden for one reason, and that was to get rid of Donald Trump. He sort of accomplished that on election night, and everything after that isn't really as interesting. I mean the last election, as the next one may be,
it was really a referendum on Donald Trump. But what you see in politics a lot these days, and this is reflected in polling, is that it's negative politics that drive rather than positive. So if you look at poll numbers of Democratic voters in twenty twenty and say did you cast your vote for Joe Biden or against Donald Trump, most Democrats were voting against Donald Trump. So that I think makes it a little bit harder for Biden to
kind of emerge. Is this captivating, charismatic figure who can sell his accomplishments and get people to sit up and pay attention.
And one point I went to build off that is if you look at Biden's video announcement for his re election campaign, he doesn't talk too much about his accomplishments. He talks much more about the threat posed by Donald Trump. It opens with imagery from January sixth, includes images of Marjorie Taylor Green and Ron desantas other Trump acolytes. And he's saying that I ran for the first time to fight the battle for the sult the nation, and it's not yet complete.
When I ran for president four years ago, I said, we're in a battle for the soul of America, and we still are. The question for facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom, more rights or fewer. I know what I want the assim to be, and I think you do too. This is not a time to be complacent.
And so Joe Biden, the point is might not need to be this superstar whoeveryone loves and indoors. He might just need to be, in his words, not better than the almighty, but better than the all times.
I think it's exactly right also, and he knows what he's selling. What he's selling is not Joe Biden is a neat guy. He's selling the idea that Donald Trump back in the White House would be an absolute disaster for the country, and in fairness, that probably is his best argument.
Nancy, Is that enough or does he need to do what he hasn't done so far, which is deriving people what he's already done, and then lay out a plan for what he will do if he gets in a second time.
I think that as long as the economy does not dip into a recession, him sort of laying out the perils of Donald Trump and you know what could happen, we will probably be enough and that's what they'll stick to.
You know.
You have to remember the midterms were so surprising because inflation was so high all fall. You know, a lot of people thought the Democrats were going to get claubered, and they managed to hang on to the Senate. The Republicans won the House, but by very few seats, and really the conditions were very favorable for the Republicans to
just do so well politically. But I feel like the Democrats did such a good job firing people up about abortion, casting all of those decisions as like very extreme positions on the part of the Republican Party, and it really worked to their advantage. And they're going to run that same playbook in twenty twenty four, you know, really running on Republicans being extreme, wanting to cut Social Security and medicare, wanting to lower taxes on the wealthy. They're going to
talk a ton about, you know, abortion restrictions. That's going to be a huge message for Democrats because it really has fired up female voters, independent suburban women. These are people Joe Biden needs to win. And so we're going to see that mid term playbook happen again in twenty twenty four. We're already seeing it.
Republicans fought for years to restrict abortion, and now that it's happened, it turns out it might not be the winning issue they hoped it would be.
Yeah, I mean politically that's turned out to be something of a poison chalice. And you look at the recent election Wisconsin and it was shockingly a blowout for Democrats in a very fifty to fifty state, driven mainly, it seems like, by backlash against the abortion decision. And I think the reason that's so troubling to Republicans politically is that this is something that's now going to play out in all fifty states because of the Supreme Court decision.
I think for Democrats in Biden that's going to be politically especially advantageous if ron De Santis turns out to be the Republican nominee, because he recently signed a six week abortion ban in Florida that goes very much against public opinion and is the sort of issue that Democrats and Biden can really focus on to rally not Democrats, but also independence and even some of the suburban Republicans who've been so instrumental in the last few election cycles.
Voters do not want a total ban. The majority of voters, that is not something that is popular with them. I saw this on the campaign trail in New Hampshire recently, where Republican Senator Tim Scott, who is planning to run for president, really spent three days going back and forth on whether or not he supported a federal abortion ban.
And over the course of those three days, as he went to Iowa, New Hampshire, and then South Carolina, he gave increasingly different answers based on pressure he was getting from local voters anti abortion advocates. And so it's just a sort of distilled to me how tough it is going to be for all of the Republican candidates to deal with this issue.
What's remarkable to me is that Republicans just seemed like the dog that finally caught the car on this issue, like they had no plan to sort of make the case to the public why restrictions on abortion are good that would appeal to main stream voters, not just their right wing base who has long supported this, and they haven't figured it out, And when Nancy was just describing, seems to indicate they're going to turtle on this issue.
We're seeing with Donald Trump too, where he's refusing to take a position at all, essentially on abortion rights, which is untenable if he becomes the nominee, Democrats and Joe Biden will bash him over the head with that. If he continues to do that, and until they figure out a message, they're going to continue to get hit by this by Democrats quite effectively.
After the break, Republican politicians lean into the culture wars.
Jordan.
Another big question on the hit parade of issues is the US Supreme Court. Obviously, Trump's ability to solidify the conservative majority on the Court has had far reaching effectsuma which we're talking about here today. How big do you think that the question of the next president being able to appoint a Supreme Court justice and all these other federal judge ships is going to be in the minds of voters.
For years, if not decades.
This was a big motivating issue for Republican voters and Republican candidates. Democrats kind of had it on the back burner. So this is something that the DABS decision that overturned the national right to an abortion is going to crystallize and for Democratic voters in this election cycle for all the reasons you mentioned that the next president will likely pick one, if not more, Supreme Court justices, and so this ties directly into the abortion discussion we've been having
so far. There are gun cases that could come before the Supreme Court. That's an issue that Democratic candidates have highlighted, and also voting rights, and so the Supreme Court is really an extension of all those policy issues we just talked about, and right now Democrats are using those as wedge issues against Republicans. So I would expect that it's
going to be a big motivating issue for Democrats. Now that Republicans got their majority on the Supreme Court, it seems like less of a motivating factor for those voters.
We talked a bit about the economy. How much do you think questions of inequality or this idea that working people are getting a bad deal because of big corporations and banks and that kind of populist message that Trump ran on that Biden also ran on in different ways. How much would you think that resonates.
I think that is just sort of baked into this campaign, especially if it's a Biden Trump rematch, like that seems to be the baseline that they're running on, So I'm not sure they're winning over voters one way or another.
I think that the way that Biden is going to attack that message in twenty twenty four is related to his accomplishments, and I think that Democrats are going to go after sort of working class voters by saying, look, one of the results of the Infrastructure bill or the CHIPSAC are all of these jobs that pay really well, that are like high skilled manufacturing jobs, and you don't
need a college degree for them. And I think that, you know, a big part of that message with that agenda is just about like creating jobs for good people who feel like they've been left behind, whereas Trump's message to those people is much more like grievance based, whereas I think Joe Biden's message is going to be more like, here's a tangible thing like a job or a factory in your hometown.
Biden himself is potentially quite vulnerable to an economic populist attack from Trump from De Santis.
Really on two fronts.
One is that if you're talking from the standpoint of working class grievance, the matter of inflation and rising prices and kind of the difficulty that that puts on people in their day to day lives is still something that's very real and present. It's possible that future interest rate rises could help bring inflation down and then maybe this will have settled by the time twenty twenty four comes around.
But it's also possible that the economy could be in a recession, and that would be another real vulnerability that Donald Trump or DeSantis could attack. I mean, Trump could say, you know, rightfully, I presided over an era of growing jobs and it hadn't been for this nasty coronavirus. You know,
I made America great. I can do it again. I do think it could potentially be a problem for Biden because really the state of the economy I think is his biggest vulnerability at this point, regardless of who we winds up running against.
Jordan. Immigration is another issue that animates the candidates from both parties, but in pretty different ways. Republicans have whipped up fear and resentment against immigrants people coming up from the southern border from Mexico and Central America. How effective will that message be this time around?
The Republican candidate will certainly make immigration a top issue. They've used it for years as a cudgel against Joe Biden. If you watch Fox News for even five minutes, a segment on the border and border crossings will definitely appear. Voters if you look at Poles, don't approve of Biden's handling of the border. I believe it's an issue where it's actually contributed to the ceiling on Donald Trump' support because in the way that he talks about immigration and immigrants.
We heard him call Mexican's rapists and crimminals when he first ran for office in twenty sixteen, and he's continued to rail against immigrants themselves and also just people of color generally this country throughout his four years in office and afterwards. It's not a popular message with the center
of this country that's going to decide the selection. And so I don't think Republicans have While they've may have hurt Joe Biden standing, they haven't found a way and talk about it that frankly doesn't sound racist and is not going to alienate a large portion of the voters.
Another cultural grievance issue that Republicans have really latched onto is anti LGBTQ legislation we're seeing in a lot of Red states having to do with books in schools and gender firming care for minors, and even things like book readings by drag performers. Donald Trump has latched onto this in a big way. How much do you think that this is going to play into the campaign.
I think on the Republican side, it's going to plan into the campaign a huge amount. Going back to a trip I took to New Hampshire, I saw Ron Desanta speak at a GOP fundraising dinner.
There.
The line that got the biggest standing ovation from the room, and this surprised me, was when he said, in Florida, no one has the right to tell a second grade girl that she actually belongs in a boy's body. It got to the whole idea of gender identity and kids, and the room went nuts. And I really feel like on the campaign trail, this whole idea of transgender education, particularly with children and how that is being spoken about in schools has really turned into a lightning rod for voters,
and Republican politicians are really exploiting it. It's sort of the way that we used to hear Republicans do fear mongering about same sex marriage or things now that are just like very culturally acceptable by the majority of people. And this is sort of the next frontier and it is resonating like much more with Republican voters than I I had thought.
Nancy, Josh and Jordan give us their early twenty twenty four predictions. After the break, we keep talking about Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. Who does Joe Biden want to run against and who doesn't he want to run against.
I don't think any question but that he would prefer to run against Donald Trump. He's run against him once he's beaten him. Trump seems to have a cap a ceiling on a support of somewhere around you know, forty three forty four percent of America. He's done nothing at all to to kind of broaden his appeal and reach out to independent voters. And of course he's been indicted
once and maybe several more times. By the time we actually get to election day, So I think that would be the easier lift for Biden.
The White House and Biden's political operation has had Trump on their mind this whole time as the person who they like to run against. The thing they point to is the twenty twenty campaign when they beat him. There's a proven track record against beating him. Ron Desanta. The flip side of that is he's someone who's in his forties. It would certainly come across as younger then President Biden.
Is pretty nimble on his feet and has these quick attack lines that might not contrast well with Biden on a debate stage.
And also it's just he's more of an unknown entity to.
The White House on the national stage, and so they know what they're getting in Donald Trump, they don't know how to necessarily do that yet against Ron DeSantis, they're certainly painting him as this extremist.
And here is coming to Rhyn De Santis talking to crowd at Liberty University.
We have embraced freedom, we have maintained law and order. We have protected the rights of parents. We have elevated the importance of family and promoted a culture of life. We have respected our taxpayers, and we have rejected woke ideology.
They'll be certain to highlight the six weeks abortion band that he signed into law, as well as other things like this few that he's having with Disney. But there's not game tape, so to say, on Rye de Santis like they have on Donald Trump and all.
I would also just add to that, you know, Democrats feel like this will actually be the fourth time that they've run against Trump, because they ran against like his policies, you know, in twenty eighteen in the midterms, they ran against him in the twenty twenty presidential election, Biden took back the White House, and then they ran against a bunch of Trump back candidates in twenty twenty two in the midterms, and they kept control of the Senate in
an election where many people thought they would not. So they just feel like, you know, Trump keeps coming back and they keep beating him, and they just feel really almost giddy about the prospect of potentially running against him again.
I think the biggest vulnerability for Biden are just ordinary
political fundamentals. We as a country, and as a media class and as a political class, have become so obsessed with seeing everything through the lens of Donald Trump that if you stop and remove Trump from the equation for a second, any president who had a thirty seven percent approval rating, who had soaring inflation, who had right wrong track numbers as negative as they are, who had such big concerns about his own candidacy, even most Democrats would
prefer a younger candidate than Joe Biden if you just step back and look at those basic fundamentals. Those are real concerns that Americans have. And yes, it's possible and maybe even likely that if Trump were the candidate, he would do outrageous things and unify Democrats and independence strongly enough to give Biden a second term.
But there's certainly no guarantee of that.
And I think people tend to gloss over the level of unhappiness in the country during Joe Biden's presidency, and I think that that's got to be a big warning sign that even people in the White House, I don't think are paying a great deal of attention.
To Another thing running through this campaign are all the lawsuits and investigations against Donald Trump. How big a deal do you think that's going to be? And then on the other side, you ever Republicans doing investigations of Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, and trying to have a sort of tip for tat there to show well, there's scandals everywhere.
Yeah, I mean, Republicans have.
Been trying to make Hunter Biden happen for years now, and it really just hasn't connected with the public. I mean, I think people just sort of understand the idea that President Biden has this kind of wayward son who may be up to no good, but it really isn't something that seems to have impacted Joe Biden or his presidency.
As far as the Trump scandals, I think that's a much bigger deal.
I mean, just since the last election, he's been impeached again, He's been indicted once, and he might get indicted one or two more times. That's something I think that is more front and center for voters. There's a sort of level of exhaustion with Trump and all the baggage that he cares with him, and he's only added to that baggage with all of these scandals and lawsuits. It's hard for me to see how he expands his support beyond
what it was in twenty twenty. While he is kind of enduring all of these things, and I think that's probably the major hurdle in him making it back to the White House.
Jordan, do you think the investigation of the classified documents that were found in Joe biden his garage rises to the level of scrutiny that the documents over Trump did.
We'll have to wait and see what the Special Council investigating that matter turns up. But Josha said, they've been trying to make Hunter Biden happen, and they haven't. The same for the classified documents. It's no doubt that it
was a problem for Joe Biden. The classified documents were wrongly found at his home and offices, but all indications are that they were mistakenly put there, Whereas there's evidence that Donald Trump intentionally tried to block federal authorities from retrieving similar kinds of documents and perhaps documents that revealed
even more sensitive information from his resort in Florida. So once again we have a problem with intensity and sort of legal peril that Donald Trump is facing that Joe Biden simply is not, and therefore it's going to be a bigger political problem for Donald Trump.
Any show talking about a presidential campaign would be remiss not to ask the only question anyone really wants to know, Nancy, Joe Biden versus Donald Trump, Joe Biden versus Ron DeSantis, who wins?
I think if it's Joe Biden versus Trump, I think Biden will win, but by a much narrower margin then that Democrats would be comfortable with. And I think Biden likely will win against Ron DeSantis too, But I also think Ron DeSantis will not make it through the GOP primary.
My answer is very boringly similar to Nancy's. I do think Biden wins a matchup with Donald Trump for all the reasons we've talked about. Ron DeSantis also is just really stumbled out of the gate in his campaign. He's not proven that he's ready for the national stage. That could certainly change. But Joe Biden's been on the national stage for decades and he knows how to run a national campaign, as he proved in twenty twenty. And so I'll take Joe Biden also in a matchup with Ron DeSantis.
Yeah, I mean, in comment, presidents just rarely lose. Donald Trump did, and if he's the one back on the ticket again, it's hard for me to imagine voters swapping out Biden for Trump. But I've been around long enough and cover politics enough to know that voters are nutty.
Politics is unpredictable.
Anything could happen, and so I wouldn't dare venture a prediction publicly.
Josh, Nancy Jordan, thanks so much for coming on.
The show, Thanks for having us.
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