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It's just past eleven pm on the East Coast on Tuesday, March fifth. This is the big take. I'm Seleia Mosen. Fifteen states voted in the presidential primary contest on Super Tuesday. Traditionally this is a decisive point in the election cycle. Trump's campaign has been working towards securing the nomination by mid March. Tonight is a clear victory for him. For Biden. Between Super Tuesday and his State of the Union address on Thursday, it's officially the beginning of campaign season. Is
Trump's grip on the GOP solidified? Will Biden be able to rekindle Trump angst to compete with trump nostalgia. We'll get into all of that and more with Mario Parker, Bloomberg's White House and Politics editor overseeing our twenty twenty four election coverage. So, Mario, we could sit here and talk about all of the ways that this Biden Trump matchup is going to feel like a twenty twenty rerun.
But I actually want to hear from you. What are some of the bigger ways that it's not just like twenty twenty all over again.
Well, in some ways.
And this is what's kind of got our coverage is that as much as the primary cycle has essentially been cruise control for months now, I think the American electorate has been signaling that it expects a rematch of the twenty twenty election.
These are unprecedented times.
Right, When was the last time that we've had a rematch to this degree. When is the last time we've had a former president make a comeback bid? When is the last time we had a former president make a comeback bid with ninety one felon accounts? When is the last time that that former president was up against an incumbent eighty one years old who would presumably be eighty six at the end of their second term, Which brings into question whether or not the first African American Indian
American woman vice president would essentially take the reins. And so that's a very long winded answer saying just as much as things stay the same when we look at the marquee, there's a lot under the hood.
Let's dig into a little bit on the Trump side. You mentioned the ninety one felon accounts. How are Trump's legal problems playing into his campaign?
He's made the traditional campaign trail and his court room appearance is one of the same. Some of the cases are delayed, for example, there's still the uncertainty as to whether or not they will take place before the election or after the election. We saw that the Supreme Court ruled in his favor that he could stay on the ballot. That was largely expected. But those sorts of challenges right one could expect to continue to kind of crop up during the course of the cycle.
So we've obviously seen Trump sweeping primaries since the Iowa Caucuses for the most part, and now Super Tuesday. Has there been anything about the beginning of the election cycle this year that surprised you.
The momentum that he gained last summer on the back of some of the legal cases and the way that the party, the GOP coal least around him, I guess the follow through has been quite surprising, and it looks
like he's going to be the presumptive nominee. Now the devil is in the details, right, Nikki Haley was able to get at least in some of the earlier primaries twenty thirty percent of support, and so the question now is about whether or not Trump still has some more work to do in terms of getting the rest of the party unified around him by November.
I want to pick up on that theme about the interesting moment that the Republican Party is at right now, because it seems to be now firmly becoming the party of Trump. Do you think that Trump's grip on the party is solidified?
Not only is his grip on the party solidified, but this completes his remaking of the party in his own image right. So, over the coming days, the Republican National Committee will vote as to whether or not to place his daughter in La Lara at the top of the committee, the primary apparatus for the Republican Party. He's hand picked almost every part or had an impact on every part of the Republican Party at this point. Mitch McConnell last
week stepped down. He was one of the most powerful leaders of the Senate in history, and he stepped down because he feels as though he doesn't have a place in the party and a leadership role in the party anymore. And again that's because he's directly at odds with the Trump doctrine. So I think what we've seen here with a sweep that you mentioned celeia because essentially he's remade the party in his own image.
What about policy? Are his policies now the Republican Party's policies officially.
They seem to be.
I mean, there's still semblances of the more traditional Republican stances. But look no further than just the House's inability to pass aid for Ukraine. Right, this is something a few years ago there would have been anathema to the party that had touted itself as one for foreign policy, American leadership abroad, et cetera. The fact that the House still has yet to pass aid for Ukraine against Russia aggression no less kind of signals where we are with the party.
So, Mario, do you think that the traditional Republican voter is going to fall in line and vote for Trump or do you think that they will stray and either go for Biden, a third party candidate, or just not vote at all.
That's a great question when we look at some of the vote totals that Nikki Haley has been able to put on board. Right again, it's a small one. Looks at something that's seventy thirty win, that's a blowout, right, But for someone like Trump, you need that one hundred percent or as close to one hundred percent of the party voting for you as you possibly can, just as a hedge against any losses that you may have among independent voters.
Right.
So, the polling, including a Bloomberg News Morning Consult poll, shows that even as Republicans largely characterize Donald Trump as dangerous right, they still plan to vote for him.
I've been talking to White House and Politics editor Mario Parker about Super Tuesday and what Trump will face in this election cycle. I want to turn to Biden. We haven't seen Biden on the trail much leading up to Super Tuesday. Do you think that now that we're past that we're going to see him actively campaigning.
Yes.
From what we understand, the President will pivot immediately out of his State of the Union speech on Thursday, hit the road, which is a traditional kind of posture from the President. He'll be going to Philadelphia, which is the key swing state of Pennsylvania. He'll be going to Atlanta, Georgia on Saturday. We know that that's a very hotly contested swing state as well. And then also just landing on surrogates and dispatching them across the country and what's.
The narrative that Biden is hoping to sell to American voters.
We'll get a little bit more of his vision for a second term agenda at the State of the Union on Thursday. Some of that will be how he plans to argue that he's going to further lower costs for voters and along the lines of prescription drugs, make housing more affordable, those kitchen table issues that he frequently speaks about, and then he'll also try to make the case that
his policies have already improved the lives of Americans. One source of frustration for the White House for the President is the fact that he feels as though he hasn't gotten credit for some of the policy accomplishments that have benefited Americans. That's the Inflation Reduction Act, that's the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. And Americans have so far been showing not just that they're not giving him credit, but they're given
a credit to Trump. They're giving Trump more credit on the economy, They're giving Trump more credit on foreign policy. They're even giving Trump credit on things like some parts of democracy. Right, while Biden holds a lead in that regard, you would expect this would lead to be much wider than what the polls are bearing out. Maybe that's a
messaging issue that the White House has to solve. They're looking at the State of the Union from what we understand as a seminal moment to pivot and kind of rejigger that messaging going forward, But as of right now, it's just not really setting it in with voters.
What are some of the other challenges that Biden is facing in the camp this year.
Well, I think the subtext to some of this is his age.
There's just no way around it. Even Democrats impolls express concern about whether or not he's fit to serve a second term. And again this is to the frustration of the campaign as well and to the White House as well. But Americans have this view of Biden that he's much older than the four years that he has.
On Trump, I would ask the same question I asked earlier about Trump. Do you think that traditional Democratic voters are going to fall in line and vote for Biden?
This is where it gets tricky.
The calculus on the Bidens side is a little bit different than the calculus on the Republican side. On the Biden side, the Biden campaign. They want to rekindle the angst that the electorate had toward Trump some four years ago, and right now what they're confronted with is just this odd nostalgia for the Trump years that oh, you know what, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was. And so now you've seen people kind of go back in Trump's column.
Are there specific policy issues that you see Biden leaning on in order to convince voters that he's the best choice.
He'll lean on democracy, for sure.
If Trump has made his campaigns anonymous with America first, Biden has essentially made his campaigns anonymous with saving democracy, not just here in the US, but also in places like Europe, where again he's advocating for sustained and continue aid to Ukraine and made that existential issue right.
He'll again try to mention costs.
He'll try to lean into his blue collar background and talk about how he's lowered costs and prescription drugs, how his policies have worked to lower the rate of inflation. And then just in terms of just social issues, you'll expect him to lean on that. This past weekend, he's spoken more about the George Floyd Policing Act, You'll see him make entreaties to black and Hispanic voters, voters of
color large as well. You'll see abortion. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that abortion will feature prominently, particularly given that every couple of months that issue flares back up with Alabama and being the latest with IVF, and so you'll see him campaign on advocating for women's reproductive rights.
So you've laid out what Biden's obstacles are on the road to reelection. But Bloomberg News has reported that Biden donors have committed more than seven hundred million dollars to help him to beat Trump, and that is on top of one hundred and thirty million dollars that his campaign
reported that they had at the beginning of February. Mario, do you think that, considering everything that Biden is up against with Trump and the obstacles within his own party and campaign and messaging that that is a competitive war chest.
Absolutely, you'd rather have more money than that in this instance. Right in twenty twenty, part of the reason that Trump's campaign was undone in the final months was essentially they ran out of money. They had to go dark on advertising in some of the key swinging states that we've mentioned, and Biden will still flush with cash. It seems to
be bearing out this time as well. There are reports out over this past weekend and how the Trump campaign has been minding money a lot more closely than previous cycles. When we get into that September October window right where Americans are super attuned to the election. If you're Biden, you're able to advertise in those airwaves and get your message across.
What about Trump? How does Biden compare to the fundraising that Trump has done and what his war chest looks like.
Well, Trump's war chest is considerably smaller. There's been the reports, including our own, about how much money is super political action committees has been devoted to or funneled toward some of his legal woes. As we just mentioned, those legal woes aren't going to go away, and so money is finite, right, that's money that could otherwise been going in North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan that they won't necessarily have.
So on this podcast, we've previously covered how GOP donors were reluctant to get behind Trump before and even during the early primaries. Do you think that that's going to change now.
That part is a bit unclear.
There's still seems to be big dollar donor concern about being associated with Trump. During the primary, they were solidly with Nicki Haley. We know that Trump's made a threat to those donors, saying anyone that continues to front Nicki Haley's campaign isn't maga and won't be welcome should he get another term in the White House. We'll see whether or not those that type of threat will impact whether or not the deeper pocketed donors come back to him during the summer.
Let's talk about some of the smaller donors and the regular voters who give money to campaigns.
Trump is essentially cast himself as the fighter for these everyday Americans who aren't rich. He's got a juggernaut in terms of small dollar campaign donations. Those retirees, those as you just mentioned, aligned with more blue collar union workers who have been more willing to chip in thirty bucks, fifty bucks, one hundred bucks.
Here and there.
They vote with their money in some ways, and so we see the fundraising appeals when Trump goes to cord or some type of legal development happens, and Trump's blasting out a text message to those individuals they're answering the bill. But with again increments of fifteen twenty thirty fifty one hundred dollars, Biden has the deep pocketed voters. He goes out to California, Los Angeles, San Francisco pretty frequently to
raise money, and he's been quite successful doing that. But in terms of apping in and translating that energy that we see from the Trump folks into tangible money, Trump's been pretty good at that conversion.
Mario, do you think that we might see voter turnout drop this election given how unhappy and unsatisfied people are about the options that they've got.
Twenty twenty was an election in which was held amid a one hundred and year pandemic, spelling over and dovetailing with the country's largest wrecking race in some fifty sixty years. All those things led to just record turnout, mail in voting, just an electorate that was extremely engaged. Now you can kind of see the apathy, right, So this election is looking a lot more like twenty sixteen than it did in twenty twenty, and twenty sixteen was a lore turnout election.
All right, Mario, Thanks so much for joining This was great.
Thanks for having me, it was great. I look forward to join you again anytime.
Thanks for listening to the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sleiah Mosen. This episode was produced in fact Checked by Julia Press. It was edited by Aaron Edwards and Michael Shepherd. It was mixed by Alex Sugia. Our senior producers are Naomi Shaven and Elizabeth Ponso. Nicole Beamsterbower is our executive producer. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. You can find The Big Take in print too on the terminal at bloomberg dot com, featuring the very best
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