Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political, and social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm Tim O'Brien. Today's Crash Course party politics versus the twenty twenty four presidential race. Have voters, Politico's analysts, and the media focused before with such intensity on a presidential race in the US more than a year before the actual vote. Perhaps, but I'm willing to say probably not. The reason why this race is so magnetic are overt Trump and trump
Ism are in the air. Democracies on the table. Pivotal policy issues are in play, reproductive rights, immigration, jobs in the economy, healthcare, public health and public safety, education, national security, the rule of law, and the funding and future shape of the federal government. Social media choose on all of this. Twenty four to seven information and disinformation is ubiquitous, Ship is at a boiling point, and Democrats and Republicans are
maneuvering for position. It all matters. So spend some time with me today and my guest, Peggy Collins, as we tee up all of this fear consideration. Peggy is the Washington Bureau chief of Bloomberg News and a veteran national and local news reporter. She is a gifted editor and thinker, and in a very shambolic world, she is a great source of clarity. Welcome to crash course, Peggy.
Thank you so much for having me, Tim, So.
To sort of get our arms around this, I thought we'd break up our discussion today into three big chunks, looking at where the Democrats are situated, then looking at where the Republicans are situated, and then trying to do a little bit of tea leaf reading for what that means in twenty twenty four is the race comes closer and closer to the finish line. And then how you, as a manager of a massive reporting process sort of deploy your troops around all of that.
Well, we're trying to get our heads around that too, so it'll be helpful for me to think it through with you.
I'll probably circle back to you at midpoint sometime next here so we can revisit all of this.
That sounds great, So let's talk first.
About the Democrats and Joe Biden and his stature as a leader. Obviously, like you know, the opinion polls have shown him as very weak, as not someone who'd be coming into the selection with the kind of polling numbers that you would describe as wind at the back. It's more like, you know, ball and chain around the ankle. Talk a little bit about that and how where you see him right now as a leader of his party.
Well, that's a good question, Tim, because I think if you ask a lot of people in the American public, what our reporting shows is that his age is one of the biggest liabilities. There's no doubt about that. It comes up a lot. But if you talk to people inside of Washington who are in his inner circle or supportive of him, what we hear mostly is that they point to the fact that he has actually passed or been able to pass some really big legislation in his
first term as president. We look at the infrastructure bill. There's been so many administrations over the decades that haven't actually been able to get a bipartisan infrastructure bill done for the country, and he has. They'll point to two
other things. They'll also point to the IRA Bill that he passed over last summer, where it's one of the biggest investments in clean technology electric vehicles that we've seen, and that's really a tribute to the climate change efforts that he has made, which a lot of young voters consider one of their most important things that they're thinking
of about the future of the country. And the third is the Chips Act in terms of countering China and national security and trying to bring more factories back to the US or near shoring with other countries. So if you think of those two to three legislative achievements, the Infrastructure Bill, IRA and the Chips Bill, Biden supporters will say he's actually gotten a lot done, but the public is looking more at okay, But we don't really feel
that necessarily yet in our towns and our communities. And again, age is something that comes up a lot in our reporting when it comes to President Biden, so.
You know, we can't bundle that a little bit. He himself is surrounded by seniors on the hill of both parties hill. Most likely it polls her to be believed be campaigning against another senior, Donald Trump. So it's not exactly like he's an old man surrounded by spring chickens. But he also presents as having some acuity problems. He can be mush mouthed when he speaks, he can wander in his thinking. Although he's wandered in his thinking for
decades before he became an older American president. In addition to that, you know, it's sort of mysterious and interesting to me, this I guess messaging problem the Dems have because you know, you mentioned the IRA as a signature legislative achievement. It's unfortunately named the Inflation Reduction Act, which they sort of set themselves up for criticism with that, given that inflation later like shot through the roof. But putting inflation aside, it's cooled off since last year. The
metrics in the economy are good. The US economy is robust compared to other Western industrialized economies. GDP is projected derived more than two percent this year. Job and wage growth have been strong, even with the inflation battle. Inflation is around three point seven percent. That's slightly above its historical average, but it's way below the eight percent plus that freaked everyone out last year. The FAT has jacked
up interest rates to deal with all of this. But you know, wage growth, job growth is high, but people feel wary, and the Democrats are not getting credit for an economy and all by most measures is doing very well. What do you attribute that to? Is that sort of you know, human psychology, is it average folks still are seeing bread prices and gas prices and their basics going up in the food line helped me get unconfused on this.
Well, I think you're right, Tim, I mean, the US economy has a lot of good things going for and I was just talking to someone this week who actually said it's been a bright spot not only for many people in America, but for the world, you know, in terms of economies around the world. But when you think about what Americans are doing every day, driving cars, buying food, paying electricity bills, those have gone up for people and
they feel it. So when it comes to those daily things that you're paying for or weekly or monthly bills, it feels like they've gone up and they've stayed there. So when economists are talking about inflation or the FED, or when we're covering it here at Bloomberg on a monthly basis and we see the numbers going down, that doesn't actually mean that people are seeing egg prices go down in the grocery stores. It means that the rate that the prices are going up are not going up
as fast. That's the disconnect, right exactly.
And is there a way out here from a messaging standpoint, how does a party presiding of either side of the aisle over a robust economy but not getting real credit for it. Is there a way to maneuver politically or to message around that. Is it just a matter of really just banging the and hoping for the best.
Well, I think it is difficult, right. So what the Biden administration has really tried to do is lean in
on what they call Bidenomics. So they say, other people call it Bidenomics, but they've really tried to lean into Bidenomics and say this is our economic policy, and our economic policy has really helped not only keep your jobs and the job numbers up, but also is preparing us for a future where we may have jobs that are in future spaces like clean energy and tech and union jobs that will set you up better for the future.
Because I do think there's this other theme in America that we've been reporting on a lot at Bloomberg, which is when you're in the middle class. It's something that's very quintessential to being American, but a lot of people in the middle class feel like it's getting harder and harder to stay in the middle class or.
Move up because it is it is the middle class in years, has been fraying since the nineteen eighties. It's one of the central dynamics of our politics, I think, is how both parties respond to that, in good faith and in bad faith.
And another key factor there tim which you've probably heard of a lot from the people you talk to, is housing affordability, because we cover it at Bloomberg in a
couple of different ways. We cover it in terms of thinking about how many people have the ability to move from a renter to a home, but also how much private equity and other businesses have gone into the real estate market and changed the structure of in America, particularly since the financial crisis in two thousand and eight two thousand and nine.
When one of those underpinnings of the American dream, the idea that you could own your own home, came under assault then and it's only gotten.
Harder, right exactly. And you know, this whole idea of the renters and homeowners is something that we really do see changing in America. I mean, rent costs went up a lot in the last few years when we've been
talking about inflation. That's one of the big drivers of those inflation numbers being so high, and that is something that structurally has changed in America and is something that policymakers are dealing with and that no matter who wins the pre residential race in November twenty twenty four, will have to deal with.
So as the Democrats try to figure out how to wrestle their way out of the economics messaging conundrum, they do have some other issues that suggest from voting patterns that they do have some wind at their back. One of the big ones, and it'll be an interesting one, I think, are reproductive rights. The Supreme Court in the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v.
Wade.
That certainly was a factor I think in the midterm elections in twenty twenty two. It's undoubtedly going to be an electoral issue in twenty twenty four. And some interesting things have been happening in states where you would think red states have actually come out to protect women's rights to access reproductive healthcare and abortions as needed. Kansas famously. How do you see that playing out as an issue for the Democrats in twenty twenty four, Well.
I definitely think it's going to be one of the issues that they are going to lean into and we're doing a lot of reporting a bloomberg right now not only on people's feelings about the economy and inflation, but does that matter more than something like the decision on Row And as you were saying, Tim, there are a number of cultural societal issues, civil rights issues that people are looking at in this race, and that at the end of the day may matter even more than the economy.
That remains to be seen, but it is going to be something that we're going to be tracking because there have been so many huge decisions made at the Supreme Court level, not only Roe, but affirmative Action and then the student loan decision, So there are some signature things that have changed in the country since twenty twenty.
And on the Dobbs decision and reproductive rights, it obviously resonates very powerfully for female voters, and they are an all important voting block in swing states and in the suburbs of big cities in swing states. So that's going to be a very interesting phenomenon to watch play out how that decision lights up the electorate in those important swing states.
That's right, and it is also an issue that Republicans and the Republican can dates are having to decide in their own states and also in the presidential election where they stand on it, because there's differences between the different Republican candidates in terms of where they fall not only on row but on reproductive rights. So I think that's another place where we're going to be watching how that resonates for voters in different states around America.
I often think of foreign policy as a weak tea when it comes to winning the allegiance of voters. You know, we elites, or we academics, or we observers, we journalists pay attention to foreign affairs in a way that the average voter doesn't. But I do think the Biden administration has conducted a fairly exemplary policy in bobbing and weaving out of how to support Ukraine in the wake of the Russian invasion and building coalitions in Europe, realigning Visa
v China in East Asia. I don't know that that'll have any meaning politically, but I do think it does adhere to the idea of adult governance in a complim world.
I certainly think you're right on that, and I think China is a big issue in this presidential race. There may not be as many voters who really glom onto the specifics of foreign policy and foreign policy stances like you were saying, But I do think China is a big issue for a lot of American voters in terms of how do we stay competitive so that we're able to keep our jobs or keep our communities growing and robust.
So that is something that the Biden administration is really trying to make a signature part of their campaign, pointing to things like the Chips Act and ways that they're trying to bring factories back to America into towns. It will be interesting to see, though, if people actually see the impact of that by the time we get to November twenty twenty four, right. I mean, it's not easy to build the factory in six months, So that's one of the issues. And then the other that you mentioned
on the Ukraine Russia War. It certainly changed so much over the past couple of years, and we are seeing them Washington some support starting to wane for spending the type of money and providing the type of aid to Ukraine that we did in the past. So that is going to be something that we're going to have to watch really closely.
You know, I mentioned in referencing how the Biden foreign policy has been conducted as being adult or mature. Where does this idea of sort of adult management of the federal government reside with voters? You know, coming out of the confusion and chaos and attempts to sort of torch the constitution during the Trump era. Biden is old, but he surrounded himself with a competent team. They've tried to
execute in a rational way against clearheaded policies. Does that matter to voters or does emotion always win the day? Is the cult around the far right of trump Ism and then just standard Republican political allegiances, Does that sort of emotional affiliation win the day over demonstrable proofs of just you have your hands on the steering wheel and the car is staying in its lane.
Well, I think for a lot of voters, the car staying in its lane is very important. That feeling of stability was something that we saw in the twenty twenty election be very important in terms that people wanted a bit more common stability in the country. I will say though, that there are a lot of people and the candidates on the Republican side are talking about this a lot who are thinking about how much we're spending as a government and whether or not that is the amount that
we should be. So I think the Republicans are touching on a nerve there when you talk about government spending versus what the states are spending, and I think on either side of the aisle, people are very frustrated by the lack of or the perception of the lack of things getting done at all in Washington, let alone efficiently.
And well, yeah, we'll come back to that a little bit later when we talk about the threat of apostible government shutdown. But while we're focused right now on the Democrats, I think some of the issues that weigh against them. The one of the ones that just seems stark ast to me as immigration. The Trump administration came under a lot of fire for how it conducted both governance of the border and the management of migrants and families and children. Famously,
Trump tried to build a wall. Famously, I feel like the Biden administration hasn't really tackled that problem, and we're seeing some of the ramifications of that with migrants coming into cities and federal work rules don't make it easy for migrants to get a job so they can pay for their own food in housing, so the taxpayer ends up having to pick up the tab for housing and food. That's become a flashpoint in a lot of places. There's been cynicism around how some of the migrants got to
the cities. Obviously then bus there courtesy of Greg Abbott and his constituents in Texas. But be that as it may, there's not a lot of clarity of vision or of political and policy purpose from the Dems around how to deal with immigration in a holistic way.
I think that's right. I think you've seen that going back many administrations. Though I will say that on both the Democrat and Republican side that this has been an that the country has grappled with and not been able to find a comprehensive solution for. And we're seeing cities really start to break under the strain of it. I mean it's New York, Chicago, Boston, as well as cities
on the border and in Florida and in California. So it is becoming a national issue that people are seeing on television, they're seeing when they walk around their cities and towns, and it is such a human issue too. I mean, I do think we have to remember that.
What I think is one of the things that the Biden administration has really struggled on is the fact that they did try about a year ago to talk a lot about their Latin American policy and how they could try to address the root of the problem in terms of unrest in some of the countries there.
That is forcing migrants north exactly, local corruption, poverty, all the things that are making families for good reason try to come north to the US to a safe Harvard exactly.
And that's real, but that also is a big problem in terms of, well, how do you solve that? And they have been trying to to encourage more private investment and deal with some of the countries in Latin America, but that's been very difficult and we haven't seen a lot of signs of improvement there, so I think their ability to message how much improvement they're making on that
front is limited. And then I think the other issue is that Biden really does need Congress to help to pass some legislation that would make some big changes around immigration, and they're pretty realistic from our reporting that there's not a lot of hope there that that's going to get done before the November twenty twenty four election.
You know, cities that are struggling to house and support migrants have also struggled in the COVID era around public safety, and that's been a big flashpoint as well. Some of
the crime statistics have been sensationalized. Actually, the homicide rate has come down sharply in recent months and even over the last year, but I still think there's a public perception that street crime is rampant in many of our big cities, and in some places shoplifting and looting of stores has been ran and that tends to be a
local issue. Most presidents are hostage to governors and mayors around that issue, but it is probably something I think Republicans are going to continue to try to hang around Biden's neck. How do you think of that playing out in twenty twenty four as an issue.
I think it will be a big issue, and I think to your point, Tim, it will be one that they do try to put at the feet of Biden. I think the issue of crime will be a big one because again, it relates to people in their towns and cities all across America, and I do want to make sure that we do separate the immigration issue and
migrant issue from crime, although oftentimes it is conflated. But as you said, the number of times we hear or see on TV instances of shop limiting and stores, or just a number of cars that are being stolen, and we have Bloomberg have reported about the uptick in cars being stolen. That's again it goes back to things like inflation.
When people can see it in their own towns or hear their own friends talk about, Oh, someone broken to my car and stole my car, my car, keys or whatnot, that's very relatable and much easier to shift the thinking of people on well, who's going to lead us out of this situation. I do also think again, the pandemic has changed a lot of people's lives in America, and we are still trying to recover from them, work.
Through all of the kind of existential and unusual challenges that presented that may well have been temporary exactly.
And the number of people who got thrown out of the job market in March April May of twenty twenty and who are still rebuilding their lives. I mean there's still a lot of people who never went back into the job market after the pandemic, and there are others that started a whole new kind of career or business or whatnot. But there's so much fluidity still in our economy, so many people who moved around, and I think we're still settling from all of it.
One of the last policy issues I wanted to focus on before we take a break is healthcare. I don't know entirely how to think about where the Biden administration is with this, other than healthcare is still a massively unaffordable thing for too many Americans. Insurance is prohibitively expensive. I think there is an economic consequence of workers who just don't get proper healthcare, families who can't deliver health care to their children so their children can grow up
and be educated, productive members of society. It feels to me like it should be a tent pole policy issue that we figured out. There's some measures around there the Biden administration has taken to deal with that, most recently empowering medicare to negotiate with big pharma companies around drug prices. And yet the roles of the uninsured are growing again. There's a lot of people being dropped off of state insurance roles in large numbers four million recently, it may
grow to as much as ten million next year. Where will healthcare reside for voters when they think about whether or not the Biden administration has helped them solve some of the most basic problems.
Well, Tim, you just talked about the Medicare and drug pricing. That is another one of the signature achievements that the Biden administration will point to, and they're hoping that another big voting block and important voting block that being seniors, is going to feel that and credit them for it. The issue, though, again, is it's not necessarily something so tangible. Same is what we're talking about with infrastructure, where you can see a building in your town and credit it
to Biden. The likelihood that that's going to happen between now and November twenty twenty four, even though they pass the infrastructure bill, is low, and the number of people who may see their drug prices go down and instantly credit Biden with it, I think is also kind of going to be a challenge for the Biden camp to keep reminding people of that if nothing else but healthcare is one of the issues in this country that on both sides of the aisle people do think needs improvement.
Let alone is broken, maybe depending on who you talk too. So I do think it's going to be an issue, but it's going to be one of those bubbling issues as opposed to boiling.
On that note, we're going to take a quick break to hear from one of our sponsors and then we'll come right back. We're back with Peggy Collins, Washington bureau chief for Bloomberg News, and we're focusing on the battle for the White House in twenty twenty four, and we've been talking about the Democrats, so let's turn to the GOP. We began talking to the Democrats about its leadership, centering
that discussion initially around Joe Biden. Thinking about where the leadership is right now for the GOP, to me, is a more complex project. You have Mitch McConnell, you have Kevin McCarthy, you obviously have Donald Trump, and you have a fractious and fractured party. When you think about leadership of the GOP going into twenty twenty four, what resonates with.
You, Well, certainly a lot of our reporting is showing that the party still see for President Trump as one of its key leaders, in the sense that he's directing the way some of the party is not only going, but what they're doing on certain policy issues. But Kevin McCarthy has really could.
I stop you for one second, because I'm curious about this. When we say that the party sees Trump as its leader, we know that in primaries it's the most passionate voters in both parties who come out and vote in primaries. That also tends to be the same population of people
who respond to poles. And I wonder to the extent when we see these polling numbers for Trump where he's double digits ahead of everyone else, well ahead of Ronda Santis, who's now fallen behind the vek Ramaswami and Nikki Haley and Chris Christy. Are those polls really reflective of the party or are they reflective of the most passionate members of the party who have an affinity for Donald Trump.
Well, I think we've seen time and time again that polls haven't been right, so I think it's right to have a question mark over them. I do think you're right, Tim, in the sense that a lot of what we're hearing right now, and where people are taking the temperature is around the most passionate early primary voters, who you would
think are likely to go for Trump. However, I will say, because of his messaging and because of his power potentially with those primary voters, Trump is still having a lot of sway in terms of where Republicans dodge or weave or go.
I cut you off to focus on that when you were about to say something that I'm sure was interesting about Kevin McCarthy. So let's go back to that.
Well, I was going to say that Kevin McCarthy has had a number of moments this year where people might have expected he couldn't get something done, and he did actually, and it's because his party is so fractured right now. He is really trying to corral some very passionate groups of people within his party that are on pretty different sides of issues in many cases. But we did see
him pull it out in the debt ceiling debate. I mean, they took us up right to the last minute, working through Memorial Day weekend, but he was able to bring them together and get a consensus. We're starting to see some of that build somewhat right now as we head into the government shutdown, But he's got a very thin line to walk because they are able to oust him as a speaker much more easily now than for speakers in the past.
And if he wants to get legislation passed on a Republican line vote, he can only afford to lose. For Republicans, right.
It's razor thin. And if you flip that for the Democrats in Biden, it's the same for them. And right now it's so difficult to get anything passed in Washington because you're really counting on a handful of people to come with you or not.
And you know, as we speak right now, they are in the midst of looking at getting appropriations bills through and getting a deal done to keep the government open. And McCarthy I think had a choice between either tilting towards moderate Democrats who wanted to work with him and negotiate on a compromise bill, or going to his right the Maga folks who sort of held him hostage for his speakership and gave him a bill of particular surrounding
how he had to conduct himself as speaker. That left him I think a little hamstrung, and he's made a choice at least right now as we speak, that he's going to tilt right and try to get this done. There. I sort of wonder if he can't, if he's fatally wounded, and if his constituency on the right, in the Republican Party in the House feels like he hasn't met their expectations, that they'll just happily pull the rug out and I'll have nowhere else to lean on because he's blown everyone else off.
Well, I think the one risk to that, and that all of the Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill have right now when it comes to the government shutdown, that this again is something that's very relatable for the American people.
You know, hey, you need to keep the doors open, the bill's paid, and so I think there's a risk for everyone in Congress right now if you're going to be the person who's going to basically shut the government down, and then we have people who aren't able to go to work, we have natural parks that aren't open, we have checks that don't go out that people are expecting.
So I think there's a risk on this one, like there was with the debt ceiling, that if you're the one standing in the way of getting something reasonable done that most people in their lives would think is a part of your normal job, that you might not go right off the cliff.
Yeah. I mean, when was the last time we couldn't get a bipartisan defense spending bill pass? That seemed extraordinary to me.
Well, it is a sign of how fractured not only you know, Washington and Republican and Democrats are, but as you were saying, Tim like the fractures within the Republican party itself.
The other thing that is interesting to me about this era we're in, and I think it's one of the lessons of trump Ism, is that Trump campaigned on emotion, not on policy. I think he sensationalized race and anti institutionalism to incent a certain population of the voters, and that has sort of captured the party's imagination. There's an utter lack of policy prescriptions. To the time, the Republicans rolled into the twenty twenty Republican Convention with no platform
and sort of happily said, yes, that's by design. It wasn't an accident. We just don't have a platform. How do you think about that? Is this the shape of political battles now, is that it's by design not going to have policy prescriptions, and it's by design going to appeal to people's emotions and in some cases some of their worst instincts.
Well, I think emotions are easier to push buttons on right, love and fear and all of those. And I also think in the age of social media, it's a lot easier to hit people with emotions faster and on the fly and on their phone. So I think there's that. I also think policy is very difficult, Like we've already talked about some really really hard problems, like solving immigration is a big problem for not only cities, but for
our relations with other countries. So I think sometimes tapping into emotions is just an easier route than trying to really figure out how we want to deal with trade with China or how to deal with AI and coming up with a US policy on what we do with artificial intelligence. So that I do think is one of the reasons why it's easier to tap people's emotions.
And it's you know, it's not a good hallmark for a mature, well functioning society when you tackle emotions and don't tackle problems. Well.
I think it is. One of the things that we do elect people for is to actually help us solve some problems that cut across states and cities and counties, and that is what people are hoping people in office will do well.
But that's our conundrums human beings is we want policy solutions, but we tend to vote with our hearts.
That's right, and we tend to vote for people who like, we relate to, or we like or things like that. So I think that's human as well.
Ron DeSantis' candidacy has been interesting to me because he was built up as someone who could be Trump in a better fitting suit and be an ambassador for some of the things that he did as governor in Florida that might get national traction. And then he really came out of the gates with this anti woke platform. You know that your schools, the educational agenda was being taken over by liberals and by woke people and people of color, and that wokeism was this poison spread acast America. It
just didn't get any traction. It might have sold in Florida, but it didn't work for him nationally. And he's got any number of oddities about him as a candidate that I think hold him back. People discount how authentically charismatic Donald Trump is. It's not easy just to repackage yourself
as Donald Trump. I was just wondering what you thought about DeSantis stumbling and these other candidates, some who are also expressly sort of Trump wannabes like Ramaswami, others who are expressly Trump critics like Chris Christi, and then others sort of trying to figure out the middle road between those like Nikki Haley. How does that sort out in the second tier of sort of people galloping behind Donald Trump.
Well, I think a couple of things you touched on there. So Ronda sat had a really big night the midterm elections, and I think a lot of that actually had to do with his COVID policies, you know, more so than maybe some of the cultural issues he then started to
turn to. I think a lot of our reporting has shown that people in the business community and on Wall Street had wished he had stayed more in the lane or focusing on the policies that he has enacted in Florida, not only maybe around COVID, but in terms of tax policy and things about crime and schools in Florida, so kind of staying on those issues, but instead he really did kind of go into the farther right cultural issues.
Tried to chase Disney out of the state of Florida right, major employer and taxpayer right.
And that's another sign of where the Republican Party is shifting. You know, decades ago, the Republican Party was very pro business, and that's a shift now. Some voters really do gravitate to DeSantis because of his policies around Disney, but others in the business community find that counterproductive to what they're looking for, which is really lower taxes or policies that help business. So I think that's the Desanta side of things.
We talked about foreign policy earlier, but one of the breakout moments for candidate Nikki Haley in the first Republican debate was actually her handling of the questions around foreign policy, and her strength on that showed through on the stage. So I think this second Republican debate on September twenty seventh will be a real moment to see if people like Haley, who made some traction in the first debate, can add more momentum to their campaign.
And Trump has said he's not going to be at this debate and stead he's going to speak to the United Auto Workers union. That's interesting because Trump has always positive in himself as a friend of the working American, even if he's pursued policies that actually haven't resulted in tangible benefits for working class people. Can he just sort
of skate by the debate processes. He's sort of floating on that both the traction he has with a meaningful, say, thirty percent of Republican voters, and his own celebrity, that he just doesn't need to show up at any of these debates.
So far, it seems like that's right. I mean, he skipped the first debate. He had counterprogramming on social media where he was interviewed by Tucker Carlson, and it really didn't seem to dent him in any meaningful way. If anything, it really made the ground shift between the other Republican candidates more because they weren't really fighting him, they had
to kind of dig in with each other. I will say that it's quite interesting that Trump's going to show up in Detroit on the same day that the other GOP candidates are in California. To your point, him, he really has made a lot of strides with blue collar workers and particularly union workers, which are historically more aligned with the Democrats. And it's really interesting because President Biden has made himself potentially the biggest pro union president of
our time. So seeing whether or not Trump is going to be able to resonate with union workers in a swing state like Michigan is going to be a real sign of how he could do next year.
Which was a move Ronald Reagan perfected back with the teamsters. Certain candidates have effectively done this out of the GOP in the past.
I do think the issue of the union workers and the autoworkers in Michigan also has some tension built into it for Biden because there's not too much he can do in terms of pulling levers to make this happen
for the UAW workers. But also it's wrapped up in some of the policies that Biden has been promoting, which is he's very pro union and pro worker, but at the same time, some of his IRA money has been pushing towards electric vehicles and pushing the car industry in that direction, which has some of the workers there saying like, we want to make sure we have protections as we move into some of these type of futuristic jobs.
In fact, some of that spending has been in right to work states, red states that are non unionized, and Biden is in this kind of where on the one hand, he I think rightly sees climate change as an existential threat and is trying to use the force of the federal budget and federal policy to address that by supporting the development of electric vehicles, which is a good national
goal in my mind. At the same time, the unions and the auto workers, who have not seen wage increases meaningfully in decades, are agitating for that and are understandably fearful of that kind of change. And Biden has to decide where does he come down to what's the solemnic solution to having these worthy goals and a constituency that wants him to act in a certain way. And I think one of the tests for his leadership is what limb will he walk out on? Because he's got to
walk out on one of them. I think at some point he can't have it both.
Ways, And how do you message that right in a clear and succinct way to people that make them understand that you're fighting for them, but you're also looking ahead to the future, right.
You know, there have been you know, famously Lyndon Johnson after the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act got pushed through in the early nineteen sixties, his advisors in the White House said Democrats have lost the South forever because of this, and Johnson famously said, well, then what's a presidency for that. Sometimes you have to risk your presidency to get on the right side of a good legislation. And I don't know that Biden is there yet.
And I think this is about McCarthy too. You know, McCarthy hungered for the speakership and now he's right in the middle in this government shutdown negotiation. He's gonna have to pick some size just to get political handiwork done, and he may not be able to appease both. And it's not clear to me yet that he has the kind of backbone to drive in there and make a kind of leadership decision like that.
But the interesting thing, Tim, I think is that when you think about leaders over time, that people do often gravitate to the leaders that are willing to ultimately make a hard decision because they kind of understand that. Well, at least they thought about what I said, and then ultimately they made a decision. But they're driving us towards something. Indecision by a leader is sometimes the worst kiss of death. Exactly.
Okay, we're going to take another break. I could just keep going right past these breaks with you, but we're going to take a break and then we'll come back and pick this discussion up again. I'm back with Peggy Collins, Washington Bureau chief of Bloomberg News, and we're talking politics. We've talked about the Democrats and the Republicans, Peggy, so let's talk about how they'll actually face off in twenty twenty four. You know, we left off talking about where
the Republicans are situated. Donald Trump has four criminal indictments sitting on his doorstep. It hasn't pulled him down on the polls. It appears that loyalists don't care if he breaks the law, even if he gets convicted of it. So that's unlikely to be a factor at this point. Though. I wonder if the trials play out, if some of these come into a courtroom, Georgia will be televised. These things tend to have an impact people can't anticipate once
the public starts paying attention. It happened with the January sixth hearings. It's a wild card with the indictment. Still, I think, do you think there are vulnerabilities or around his candidacy that Democrats haven't exploited yet?
Well, I think that what they're waiting to see, as you said, Tim, is the intersection of the two. So Trump has definitely made a strategic move to tie his legal battles and his campaign very closely. He hasn't tried to like shed one for the other. Instead, he's really intertwined them and kind of said to voters, you know that he feels the legal cases are unjust and as part of an effort to obstruct his ability to win
for president again. But as you said, will the Biden administration and the Biden campaign, as we get closer to the time that Trump has to step into a courtroom be able to really tie the two for voters in terms of democracy and that theme and really hit on that. We saw the Biden administration and Biden himself make a big speech right before the November midterms where he really
honed in on this is an election about democray. Will he be able to do that at key times next year if Trump is still the front runner that it really resonates for people if they're seeing Trump in a courtroom on TV related to January sixth.
So take me to task if I'm being too reductionists in this next question. But I'm thinking about six swing states Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia. Will twenty twenty four come down to where voters in those six states decide to place their votes.
Well, we're definitely looking at those states, and we've been sending reporters there all year already to talk to things about how they feel about the economy and a lot of the other issues in the campaign. I will say we've also got our eyes on a few other states as well. A lot of people moved during the pandemic and brought their votes with them. We're looking at states like North Carolina as well. Virginia is also an interesting
state Colorado. But the states that you just mentioned, those six key swing states that in twenty twenty were swing, are certainly going to be interesting. A couple of signs of why we saw the first Republican Debate placed in Milwaukee, the Republican Convention next summer in Milwaukee. So the Ross Belt for Biden and for Trump is going to be huge again. And then the midterms, and in many ways
twenty twenty, you know, Georgia was absolutely crucial. So those are places where we're really trying to get a sense of what people care about most and how that will influence their vote.
Another interesting factor in this next election could be at third party movement No Labels. They call themselves No Labels. They're not very transparent that crew about how they're funded or who's behind it. They are asserting that they're an authentically independent, nonpartisan movement that just wants to give voters
another option. No Labels critics say they're actually just a spoiler, that they're in there to strip independence away from Biden and then make it easier for Trump, who's a weaker national candidate than he is as a primary candidate, to make it easier for him to win at the national level. How do you think about No Labels at this point? Is it much ado about nothing or are they going to be a factor.
I think what we've been hearing most about No Labels divides into two camps. One when you think about the business community, even some on Wall Street, they're a bit intrigued and you know, looking at it because they think that the no Labels camp is voicing some of that more pro business tax policy, moderate Republican policy stance that some of them are gravitating for and don't see in
the field right now. And then on the Democratic side, as you were saying to him, most of what we hear is this concern that any type of third party or even another Democrat right against Biden could really dent to him enough with independent voters that it could make the difference.
So in an environment like this, like, how do you think about deploying your artillery and spreading them out? Like what are priorities for you as you're managing both the way you task your reporters and the kind of information or themes you want them to bring back home to your readers.
Well, one of the most important things I've been saying in the newsroom here in DC is that we want to make sure that we can credibly say to people next summer, next fall, in twenty twenty four that Bloomberg has been out in the different states around the country to talk to people on the ground really about how they feel about the economy, what they think about the people who are running for office, not just drop in from New York or DC in October twenty twenty four.
We want to hear from them now and stay in touch with them. So another big theme for us is going to be on the economy. How much will the economy matter? Because this is a place where Bloomberg really shines. We have a lot of people who are really knowledgeable about the economy, about inflation, about trade, about the FED, and we can really add some value, I think, in that space to really delineate how people feel about the economy and whether or not it is actually ultimately the
factor that drives people's vote. And I think the third thing we're really looking at is this shift in industrial policy because of the Biden administration's legislative wins. Does it actually resonate in different places around the country that they have been able to put some money into new factories, new jobs, clean energy, or does it end up not either coming to communities in time for the election, or they don't get credit for it and it doesn't end up mattering.
You know, I always think of good politics as bread and butter issues like jobs, education, and healthcare. Elections come and go, but there's been a fairly steady readout from voters for decades that those are the things. They want food on the table, they want a better future for their kids, they want a roof over their head. And then there's a lot of other issues that we all
are concerned about, but they're not as central to most voters. Thinking, you've watched a number of elections at this point over the years, what is there about this election that's different for you, distinctly different from other elections that you've watched and participated in.
I think one of the things that's going to be most distinctly different from twenty twenty because you know, twenty twenty was the year of the pandemic, but we are certainly coming out of it now hopefully and settling in as the effect of that, he's almost like coming out of a war, right, How does that actually change what people want with their lives from their country, where they live, and how they think the future or what the future
should look like. So I do think that's one of the biggest macro issues that will come out of this election, but it's going to be almost impossible to really pin down into people go into the voting box.
I always like to end the show by asking my esteem to guess what they've learned, And I'm wondering, what have you learned since twenty twenty about the landscape that you observe.
Well, it's so interesting, Tim because when I think about twenty twenty, we had all these grand plans going into now, which we're trying again at this time to really roll out, like I was saying to you, really getting reporters out
into different states around the country. We're really focusing on the middle class and trying to talk to people in the middle class and gather data about them so that when we get to November twenty twenty four, we're really able to add value to the public by talking about issues and showing that we talk to people over time. But the grand plans that we had going into twenty twenty and how to cover that election were completely updended
by the pandemic. So one of the things that it taught me as a journalist is to keep reminding yourself to expect the unexpected. That we really don't know what's going to happen between now and November twenty twenty four. So many things will change, but one thing I'm almost certain of is things are going to happen that nobody expects, and so our job as journalists is just to keep doing the best that we can to tell people as many of the facts as we can get.
I could talk to you for hours more. Will you promise to come back on again?
I would love that.
Peggy Collin is the Washington Bureau chief of Bloomberg News. You can find her on Twitter at mk m Collins. Here at crash Course, we believe that collisions can be messy, impressive, challenging, surprising, and always instructive. In today's Crash Course, I was reminded that, no matter how much we want to think that voters focus on issues and policy when they go to the polls, oftentimes they're driven by emotion as much as anything else. What did you learn? We'd love to hear from you.
You can tweet at the Bloomberg Opinion handle at Opinion or me at Tim O'Brien using the hashtag Bloomberg Crash Course. You can also subscribe to our show wherever you're listening right now and please leave us a review. It helps more people find the show. This episode was produced by the indispensable Ana ma asurakas Moses on Dom and Me.
Special thanks this week to Michael Falero. Our supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson, and we had editing help from Sagebauman, Katie Boyce, Jeff Grocott, Mike Neitze and Christine Vanden Bilard Blake Maples does our sound engineering and our original theme song was composed by Luis Garra. I'm Tim O'Brien. We'll be back next week with another crash Course