Age Against the Machine

But first, Labor Day usually marks the unofficial start of the campaign season. I know you guys spent the last few weeks talking about the Republican primary, which still seems to be frozen in place. Despite four indictments for Donald Trump and one debate that he skipped. If you take all the polls that have come out since Milwaukee early, state and national, looks like there's basically been no movement for our pal Ron DESantis. Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy have maybe gained a few points, and Trump continues to lead the field by 30 to 40 points.

This is after the mugshot after four proud boys leaders were just sentenced to a combined 82 years in prison for January 6th. After a judge just ruled that Trump is liable in E. Jean Carroll's second lawsuit against him. And after, we just learned that. The IT guy who was charged in the Mar-a-Lago documents case has now flipped on Trump and is cooperating with Jack Smith. Did I miss anything else? Are we all caught up?

Here's Florida's Matt Gaetz on what their plan is when we get back to Washington in the coming weeks. We have got to seize the initiative. That means forcing votes on impeachment. And if Kevin McCarthy stands in our way, he may not have the job long. So let's hope that he works with us, not against us.

But we've got contingency plans in the event that that he's not as productive. Did Joe Biden commit an impeachable offense? While I was on vacation with what? What is going on there? I love this.

It's like, we're going after Joe Biden, and if Kevin McCarthy doesn't let us, we're going after Kevin McCarthy, too.

In your absence, you missed no crime, no high crimes, no low crimes, no medium sized crimes. There were no crimes in your absence.

It is, if it wasn't probably so bad for democracy and government, and people's faith in the system and everything else, it would be quite amusing.

So he has come up with a plan. Did he try to persuade them? No, did he try to strong arm them? No.

Did he try to bribe them with, uh, pork barrel projects? No, what. He's decided his best idea is to float impeachment and then turn around and tell these Republicans that they have to support keeping the government open. Because if they shut down the government, then they're also going to shut down the impeachment inquiry that they so desperately want. There's a massive flaw in that plan.

The flaw in that plan is that the government does not entirely shut down. Congress does not shut down when the government shuts down. The because they have to be there to vote to reopen it. So then one person decides which is our essential personnel, essential services, who are the people who continue working during the shutdown? I'm going to give you one guess who that person is.

How great is that?

It is a huge distraction, it takes up a ton of resources within the White House to deal with it. One of the reasons that McCarthy has tried to sell the impeachment inquiry to other Republicans is. That gives them, that is, the apex of their ability to, uh, investigate and get documents and witnesses from the White House. Uh, now we know from Trump's impeachment that that not as clear cut as it sounds. Since we didn't, most of the people didn't actually have to testify or give up documents. But that all, you just don't want a bunch of macro Republicans rooting around in your emails, and it's a pain in the ass. They don't want it.

They prefer not to do it. So I completely understand that from just a. We have to run the government and a reelection campaign at the same time. We don't need this additional burden on us.

I don't see any of the I don't see any evidence, any allegations. Even like, Dumb shit, senators like Tommy Tuberville was like, I don't. We're really going to go through another trial. Why would we do that? So it doesn't seem like there's a big appetite for it in the Senate, among Senate Republicans, who aren't exactly known to be a moderate bunch these days.

Which seems like another thing like, there's. It's hard to imagine a way in which this plays out well for McCarthy. Doesn't mean Biden wants it, doesn't mean it should happen, but like, he really hasn't thought. This one through is my take.

Interestingly, when the Journal poll gave people the option to vote for third party candidates, uh, and they listed like, Green Party candidate Cornell West and some Libertarian party candidate. That I've literally never heard of before and think might've been made up. Only 3 of voters took the option for the third party candidates, and that left 17 undecided, which I thought was notable. We can get to our old colleague Jim Messina, who was Obama's campaign manager for the 2012 reelect. Uh, just gave a slide deck to Playbook, in which he makes a data driven case. That you'd still rather be Biden than Trump, and Jim also said to Playbook quote. Historically, we're fucking bedwetters.

Democrats had their hearts deeply broken when Hillary lost, and people didn't see that coming. And so, you know, we continually believe every bad thing people say. What do you think about Messina's argument?

We should, we should mentally prepare ourselves for it.

But we just have to prepare ourselves for that and it will be incredibly close. I agree with Jim that Joe Biden under current conditions and current conditions include a strengthening economy and Donald Trump not in prison. Joe Biden is a slight favorite in that close race, and he's a slight favorite. Because incumbents usually win, incumbents who are unopposed in primaries almost always win, Trump being a glaring exception to that rule. The economy, although people are very sour about it, the economic indicators are consistent with incumbents who get reelected.

We will have to see in this new post-pandemic environment whether that holds true. But that is a point in Biden's favor, and the third reason is that Biden has many more paths to get to 270 than Trump. Trump has to flip a bunch of states that are moving demographically to become more blue, or have voted for Democrats consistently over many years. With the one glaring exception, another glaring exception being Trump 2016 and so incredibly close. But Biden is probably the slightest of favorites in what is pretty damn close to a toss-up as of right now.

But like, you know, if if you're worried, then yeah, you should be worried. It's like a worrying prospect that Donald Trump could win the presidency again. And I don't want to like yell at people for being worried. I mean, you, you say this all the time, worry about everything, panic about nothing. The question is like, how can you direct your energy towards helping achieve the outcome we want? Which is making sure that Donald Trump doesn't get back to the White House?

And that was unpleasant for me, so I did this alone.

But there's been like three reactions to these polls, One is the utter panic, Holy shit, what is going on? Can Joe Biden win?

What's wrong with this country? That's one, two is, well, the polls were really fucking wrong in 2022, so we should assume these are wrong too, and the third is stop polling.

It's way too early. stop talking about polls. it's way too early. First one you addressed, second one.

Yes, that is true. The polls were wrong in the wrong direction in 2022, and they were wrong in the other direction in 2024. Sorry, god damn it, they were wrong.

Yes, it's true that they were too Republican in 2022, but they were also too democratic in 2020 and 2016.

We have no idea, maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. There's no harm in preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.

The last thing is, you know, who's doing a lot of polling right now, the Biden campaign, because it's very important to know where the race stands today. So you can figure out how to get it where you want it to be by knowing who you have to talk to and what you have to say to them. And so there is a reason that we are having this conversation, even if it feels unpleasant to the people listening, but especially to us.

And by the way, the last race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump was an extremely close race. And you can talk about Joe Biden's popular vote victory to make yourself feel better. But it still only came down to what was like 40,000 votes across three states. So that was close, so obviously it's going to be close again.

But then people will say. But Donald Trump is facing 91 felony counts. How can it still be this close the second time around? And he tried to, you know, overturn the last election. What the hell's going on? So why? why do we think we just think that? Do you think that it's just the polarization right now? Rules all.

And like, that's more that that that structural issue that we're facing is more salient than, like, whatever Donald Trump has done. Do you think it's Biden? What do you think it is?

Weights Republican based voters because of how the college works. What is? Yes? It is true that the 2020 race was really close, these polls show a close race, 2024 is probably close, but what is interesting? what about these polls?

Is the popular vote? race is tied? It was not tied. In 2020, Biden won by more than 7 million votes. And so the question is, why is the pop? And a tied popular vote race is something that'd be very consistent. Trump wins Electoral College.

Almost certainly, and so why is it so close? And so while you, you know, while you were gone and I was trying to occupy myself, I went in. I did this for Messagebox and I went into the New York Times Siena poll that came out in early August to look at what the CrossTabs said. And compared it to the Pew Validated Voter study of 2020. Which is probably one of the two or three best pieces of data we have about who actually voted and who they voted for. And what I found is that the main reason this race is so close is that Joe Biden is underperforming with his 2020 voters right now. So in that New York Times poll, Trump is getting 91 of the people who voted for him in 2020, and Biden's getting 87 of his voters.

And 9 of people who voted for Biden in 2020 in this poll. Either claim they won't vote if the race between Biden and Trump, or intend to vote for a candidate other than Biden or Trump. And that's the difference right there. And now, that group is disproportionately made up of younger voters, voters under the age of 45. Interestingly enough, 16 of voters 30 to 44 are planning to vote for a third party candidate or not vote at all. That's a huge chunk of Biden's base.

And the other group is non-white voters, particularly Black and Latino voters, are supporting Biden at much lower rates than they were in all the polls, not just in the New York Times poll, than they did in 2020.

And that is the Delta between where Biden wants to be and where he is right now.

There's a portion that said that some, as you said, will say they're not going to vote, and some will vote third party. And I think what's extra tough about this, which I know from the last season of The Wilderness that I did, is like, these voters, these are not like voters who were super progressive. And they're just like waiting for some organizer to knock on their door and tell them. Like, Joe Biden is more progressive than you think. And look at all the good things he's done. And blah, blah, blah, that's not who these voters are.

They actually tend to be more moderate, even though they're young and non-white, because, and the reason they tend to be more moderate is all the young. Non-white voters and white voters who are very progressive. They're already voting, they're going to vote for Joe Biden, they're out there, it's whatever, it's the it's, it's these voters who are disaffected from politics.

They do not consume politics like we do. They do not consume the news as much as we do, which also makes them harder to reach for a campaign. So throwing up an ad on television is not necessarily like, I think, the best way to reach these voters. They're not going to read a lot of the coverage of the race. And I think the real challenge for the Biden campaign is going to be figuring out how to reach these voters who are disaffected from politics in the first place. But did turn out to vote for Joe Biden in 2020..

Do you have any thoughts on how they do that?

He's actually beating Biden in some polls. On the measure of looks out for people like you, or fights for you, or looks out for the little guy, or whatever. Whatever the looks out for everyday people, whatever that measure is. Here's a guy who flies on his private jet. Passed the most egregious tax giveaway to corporations and rich in the history of the country. And it is part of a party once got Social Security and Medicare, and he's treated as some sort of advocate for working class people, and we got to change that.

Here's how Biden addressed the issue during his Labor Day event. I tell you what someone said, You know that Biden ain't getting old, man, I tell you what? Well, guess what, guess what, I tell you, you know, the only thing that comes with age is a little bit of wisdom.

I've been doing this longer than anybody and I guess what I'm going to continue to do with your help. What do you think about the With Age Comes Wisdom argument?

That is very evident in the polls.

Otherwise, only 47 percent of voters in the Wall Street Journal polls say that Donald Trump is too old to run for president, even though he's only three years younger than Biden. And Trump would also be the oldest president ever elected if he's elected again, why do you think that is? Why do you think that Trump's age isn't as much of an issue for people?

If your uncle talk like Donald Trump talks, you would have a family meeting about how to deal with this. Health care like that is how it is. But the issue here, I think there's two reasons why we don't hear about Trump's age. One is the press has decided that Biden's challenge is his age. And there we've created this sort of. They have created a flywheel here where Donald Trump and Republicans and right wing media say Biden's too old.

Press says Republicans say Biden's too old, Press then writes, think piece that says, Is Biden's age going to be a huge problem? Voters read that pollster as voters of their concern about Biden's age. Voters say yes, press then write story about increasing concerns about Biden's age. And so it is.

It is taken off. And I think the the concerns about Biden's age are legitimate. People should have them, they should have them about Trump too. But the way it's being covered in disgust, I think, is deeply irresponsible.

When the press has done the right thing, what the press should do is they cover Biden every day. They should see if he can do the job, if he's capable of doing the job. All of the reporting says yes. They've talked about some minor adjustments he has made around, like which steps, set of steps he uses. But there's been no suggestion. Not from the reporters, not from the Republicans who meet with Joe Biden, not from world leaders. That he is not a man 100 percent on his game in these meetings. And that's what the press should tell us.

The press should not tell us that people are concerned, the press should tell people whether they should be concerned or give them facts, information. And the story here is that Joe Biden can do the job at 80, not that people think that Joe Biden may not be able to do the job at 80..

Right, so like people are not, I don't think we can. I don't think we can say that, like people are imagining it, right? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, but I think that's.

I think I think in some ways, like it can't be dismissed, because then voters think you're just like, what are you talking about? Everything's the exact same and it's like, Well, no, it's not the exact same. What you can say is the guy can really fucking do the job, and he's still, he's still completely with it and he can, you know, and so like, I think that, I think you have to acknowledge that, that that you understand why. People would think he's old, 80 years old for the presidency, but that the guy is still very much competent, very much able to serve and do the job.

C at 4 a..m. On Sunday, he landed in eastern Poland and then took a nine and a half hour train to.

So, please react.

They never see him speak, they never see an event, they, they're just they're not watching the places where Joe Biden is covered and Donald Trump. Because he's a lunatic, and this is not to his benefit most of time. And Barack Obama, because of sort of the cultural figure he was in a very different media environment, is that people were always seeing Barack Obama and Donald Trump. And so if you don't see Joe Biden, and all you ever hear is that Joe Biden is really old. And maybe you see some edited clips from the RNC, or some cherry pick footage that maybe is circulating on social media. And you know, he's 80 years old, you're going to think he's too old. But if you say, if you have a point of comparison with what the guy's actually doing, you can have a more nuanced take on the age issue.

And I think this ad tries to get at that.

There's a strategy or any creative ideas?

You're basically a huge part of both the paid and the earned communication strategy. The free, social or traditional media is going to be getting Biden in front of people who do not normally see him. That includes young voters and less engaged voters. And so there's going to be a lot of, I think, communications things where you're not a CNN Town Hall or the Sunday shows. It's going to be, you know, a lot with influencers or interesting podcasts on video.

Or, you know, like when he did Smartlist the podcast before the election last time, where people who will? What used to happen in the old media world is that you would bump into politics as you were doing other things. Either because it was in your Facebook feed or your Twitter feed, because you were tuning into the news to find out the sports or weather. That doesn't happen anymore. You have to go where people are who do not consume politics already are, so I think they will do that. You know, he did that podcast with Jay Shetty, I think, Who's the mindfulness person? with a very popular podcast.

Like, that's the sort of things I think you'll see more of. I've been trying to think about the messaging of this, like how you? Because a lot of us are going to be in the position of talking to our friends and family about Joe Biden, right? And the age is going to come up, so I try to do. This will be my best take, composed between one and two in the morning last night in my head.

We know Joe Biden can do the job because he's been doing the job. He became president in the middle of an unprecedented series of crises, including a pandemic and a historic recession. While he was president, he also dealt with a global spike in inflation and a Russian invasion of Ukraine. He has been ably competently navigating those crises for the last three years. His policies helped save the economy where we are now.

Unemployment is now at a historic low, the economy is growing again, and wages are going up and costs are going down. He has passed a series of historic pieces of legislation which helped make the economy more fair dealt with. Climate change launched a manufacturing renaissance in America, with clean energy and well-paying jobs. He has passed legislation to help veterans deal with gun violence and rebuild Americans roads and bridges. Many of those were bipartisan pieces of legislation that he was able to pass because he had the experience to do so. Even though this Republican party is so radical that most of their members won't even admit that Joe Biden legitimately won the election.

Joe Biden has been doing a hell of a job and now we've got to give him the chance to finish the job. Because the last thing we want to do is undo all the progress of the last few years and go back to right where we were when Joe Biden took office. With double-digit unemployment in a country that was swirling in chaos, the end?

They don't know what he's done and they keep hearing he's really old, so you are tying all those things together. One way to prove that he can do the job going forward is to show that he has been doing it this whole time. Which people don't actually know, and I think that matters a lot. It's not going to be let's go get our voters back and then worry about the people in the middle as the campaign goes on.

But I think this part of the the Biden, part of the messaging is the part we control and the part we should be doing right now. As opposed to sort of launching a bunch of attacks at Trump that probably do nothing more than strengthen him in the primary.

Today, inflation is down to three percent, unemployment the lowest in decades. There's more to do, but President Biden is getting results that matter. I'm Joe Biden and I approve this message.

So I always start with this premise whenever I hear an ad, which is if there's a political ad that a campaign has spent a bunch of money on. They have tested it and they have found through that testing that it is effective. People don't, people usually, especially in the presidential level, where they have more money than like a local congressional race. They don't usually spend a bunch of money on an ad that they have no idea whether it's effective or not, so I assume this ad's effective. I was wondering if, like, do people? I guess, do people know what fixing supply chains is? Do they know what it meant when he said he fought corporate greed?

Like, what's specific? I'm just I'm sort of interested in. I know you have to squeeze a lot in a 30 second ad, but I'm wondering how much assumed knowledge is there? I don't know.

What do you think?

Is there enough context in that ad? Maybe not, but and this is one things we really try to guard against. And when I do the YouTube show on political experts. Because these ads don't exist in a vacuum, right? There's other ads happening, there's other communication happening, there's digital stuff happening. And they're pretty finely tuned and targeted at certain groups of people.

So you assume that this is one piece of information again, so you just view this ad as the beginning, middle and end of the story. It's not going to scratch any itches, but I think if it's part of a larger set of communications around, you know, they're out there on Bytonomics talking about fixing the supply chain. And so in that sense, you hope it probably that it works and effective.

But it is it has a laundry list element to it that may turn off some voters.

Much politico reports that there is, quote, considerable unease among Democrats about this. I know that you do not have that unease. Because I'm an avid reader of the message box. And you wrote about it this morning. Why do you think not talking about Trump is the right strategy for Biden at this point in the campaign?

That's going to happen again. Super Pacs run negative ads against Trump. He's going to talk about Trump. He's going to have to navigate the tricky dynamic around not commenting on the specifics of Trump's many, many criminal trials happening in the federal courts. But he's going to talk about Trump right now, in this point.

And there was a very good NBC news article sort of laying out Biden's thinking on this. And what they talked about is that they're trying to, they're following. The same strategy that we used in 2012 during the Republican primary is that we did not comment on we. Our focus, all of our anti-Republican energy on congressional Republicans. Biden is doing that with quote unquote MAGA Republicans. But the reason to not talk about Trump right now is twofold.

One, he's got a lot of work to do on his own with ads like the ones we talked about. He's got to inform voters about him and rebuild up his image with his voters. And so that's priority number one, and time and money are limited resources, and so that's the second reason is a much more strategic.

And that's why we never talked about Romney until he was the nominee. Because if all of a sudden, Donald Trump is probably going to win this primary going away. But the best thing that can happen to Joe Biden is this becomes a protracted primary. Maybe someone else wins Iowa, maybe someone else wins New Hampshire.

Maybe this gets past Super Tuesday, where Donald Trump is now on federal trial for trying to overturn an election. And if Biden starts attacking Trump all the time right now, he's going to fast forward the election, he's going to elevate Trump. Make it more likely that Trump wraps his things up by the end of the New Hampshire primary. And so, just strategically, the last thing you want to do is make it more likely that Trump wins the nomination. Running away. You want him to be stuck fighting with Ron DeSantis and I don't know Vivek or Nikki Haley, whoever else. As opposed to running the general election while Biden is off, taking advantage of that incumbent advantage.

So those are the two reasons that I'm totally fine with what he's doing.

So go fix that problem, which will give you more credibility when you engage in the attacks. It's a lot. It is so early, despite this very long pod that we've talked about. We've talked about the 2024 election, it is really, really early in the general election, it's 14 months away.

And he doesn't mention Romney by name, he sort of he does talk about, like the crowd in Washington and Republicans and their philosophy and stuff like that. And but he did it in such a way that when Romney was the eventual nominee. You could basically just slot Romney's name in to that speech if you wanted. And the whole message of the speech would be the same. And so I think that at some point, of course, this was December of 2011 that Obama did this.

But I think at some point in the fall, this fall or early winter, if I were the Biden folks, and they're probably going to plan this anyway. But I would sort of lay out a speech where, again, he doesn't have to mention Trump by name, or he can. But I would lay out what they believe the choice should be in the election, or at least how they want to frame the choice. Because I think getting the story right and the message is almost even more important than any individual piece of information. You need to get out there about Joe Biden or Donald Trump.

And then you have the finish the job message. And that's both about sort of the economic progress you're making, but it's also about protecting democracy and and that is at the core of this whole thing. Because again, if you just you put aside all the polls and all the shit that we read, you just go talk to people like, What is the scary thing about Donald Trump becoming president again?

It's that he almost tried to overturn democracy last time, right? Like this whole system with whatever issues you care about, whatever side of the issues you're on, like the guy tried to fuck up the whole system last time. And we wouldn't have had, like, representative government and we're just going to install himself in power forever. Like that is at the core of what this next election is going to be about.

And at some point, you've got to figure out how to get there as fast as possible. To start wrapping people's heads around. The fact that, like, those are the stakes in the twenty, twenty four elections, and they actually, and it couldn't be higher. All right, before we go to break, a few quick housekeeping notes falls just around the corner, and you know what that means?

Pumpkin spice, Oh my goodness, sweater weather. More incredibly important, elections for abortion rights. OK, there we go.

In Virginia, we've got to maintain a majority in at least one chamber of the legislature to block the extreme anti-choice agenda. Meanwhile, Ohioans will be voting on whether to codify reproductive freedom in the state constitution. Visit VoteSaveAmerica..com to learn more and find out ways you can get involved. One more related item here. Republicans in the Wisconsin General Assembly are threatening to impeach Justice Protasewicz if she doesn't let them keep their rigged, gerrymandered maps.

Ben Wickler says they're launching a campaign to help stop this at DefendJustice.

Com. So if you're in Wisconsin, talk to your representatives. If you're not, check out the website and see how you can help. We'll be talking more about this issue in the weeks to come on this podcast. Also, if you're looking for a smart, funny explainer on what in the absolute fuck is going on in British politics, Pod Save the UK is the podcast for you.

Each week, hosts Nish Kumar and Coco Khan break down the biggest news in the United Kingdom. From the sex scandal at the BBC to the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Listen to new episodes of Pod Save the UK every Thursday wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, I talk to Frank Foer about his brand new book on What Makes Joe Biden tick.

Joining us today, the author of The Last Politician, the first real insider account of the Biden presidency that's out this week. Frank Foer, Welcome to Pod Save America.

It's a useful trope. But I got to the end of the first hundred days and I totally did not have enough material to write a book. And I think, you know, from being on the other side, that at the beginning of an administration, you have these conversations with aides who are just trying to get their own footing. And they're super paranoid about being the one person to leak. Everything is in process and people don't like talking about things as they're happening. And so the hundred days rolls around and Biden proposes the Build Back Better bill, which is a huge deal.

It's a huge amount of social spending. I thought, OK, this is a good excuse for my publisher to keep going and also an incredible story. If he's able to jam this thing through in a 50-50 Senate and then end of the year rolls around, Manchin pulls the plug on. Build back better. And it was like a dark, dark moment for the Biden presidency. And it felt like maybe a bummer note, or an unfair note, or a note that wouldn't hold up over time if I stopped it there.

And so my publisher said, All right, go to the end of year two. And really, the process of writing a book like this is you just got to keep showing up. Patience is a virtue I do not necessarily have as a journalist I want to be.

I want to hit my deadline if possible, I want to, but I didn't have the material until things actually happened. And then the nature of media is that media gets so distracted, it's like Afghanistan happens.

They run and chase the next story, and then, as the book writer, you come in. And you're able to have all these conversations with people who want to unburden themselves, who want to explain themselves for the sake of posterity, and they want to claim credit for various things, if they, if they're victorious. And that's when the good stuff started to roll in for me.

When I was in the White House, I was like, Oh, I'm talking to any book people, but yeah, but I feel like you, I mean, I would. I would argue. You wrote a very favorable book about Biden's first two years. Did you? did you try to interview him?

There's no doubt about that. But then there are these other moments where he's explaining his deeper thinking. And you think, oh, the public really would benefit from hearing a lot of that. Like, he's able to talk about grand strategy in the Indo-Pacific. With all of this detail, this sense of how the pieces fit together. And you know he would.

People don't see that side of him. And they would benefit, I think, politically, on some level if they could.

And my wife, my three-year-old and my in-laws were all in there with Joe Biden, who had stopped by the office. Because he recognized my mother-in-law from meeting her three years ago. And then he brought us up to the Oval and he's like, telling us all these stories. And it was classic Biden, because on one hand, there were some, there were some long stories, but it's also.

You're like, you get such a deeper insight into his thinking, you get that he's sharp, right? Like, which is everyone's concern, and also just like the kindness and warmth and generosity all come through as well. But he could, like, he was like carrying on for an hour about everything, like different details, you know?

That's an inherent skill of a great politician, and something that that doesn't translate always in a mass media environment.

There's Jonathan Alter, who'd written a book about Obama, kind of set me up for this. At the beginning, his word of advice was that there's some, you know, the expression familiarity breeds contempt, and he said, with Joe Biden, familiarity breeds respect. And I definitely found that to be true for myself as I journeyed.

And that's not just Republicans, that's a big chunk of independents and Democrats as well. What do you think is going on there? Like, why don't more voters have a view of Joe Biden's presidency? That's similar to the story you tell in this book.

But he gives set piece speeches every day. And yet they never really managed to break through because he's reading off of a script and it's the age issue is so tied up. I think in the diminishment of his presidency. That because of the way that he walks, because he doesn't speak with the same level of energy that he did before. There's just a sense that he hasn't been an active president, I think. He began with the theory of the case that he wanted to lower the temperature in the country. And to get people to have politics recede from the forefront of everybody's mind. Because it dominated it in such a destructive way during the Trump era. And he needed people to take the vaccine, and so he didn't want to overly politicize that.

But now we get in here. And you know, the other thing that I should say is also they've been very reluctant to claim credit for things. In a way that I guess I understand, but is ultimately self-destructive. So you take something like the fact that they saved the economy from collapse while inflation continued to persist, and even though unemployment remained crazily low. Which was their goal all along? They didn't like to talk about their economic achievements because they thought they would never break through. They didn't talk about the vaccine. The vaccine is one of the great successes in the history of government, like a beautifully designed program.

You could within six months of them coming into office, you could walk into a CVS and get a shot that would save your life. Very, very complicated program. But Covid never really disappeared. So, and they got burned on July 4th of that first year. For trying to claim a little bit of credit, so they just stopped claiming credit for for returning life to normal.

And then you get around to this other stuff, the Inflation Reduction Act. Well, you know, it's a very un-Joe Biden-like name for a piece of transformational.

We didn't market it good enough and we're going to. It's not going to be the same with the Inflation Reduction Act or the American Rescue Plan. And then, sure enough, they have, like, run into the same set of roadblocks. And I sort of wonder, as you were talking to all the different people close to Biden. Like, how much of the challenge of the last couple of years is like a structural challenge, like polarized electorate, fractured media environment.

So it's hard to get your message out. Declining faith in institutions is like sort of the backdrop of all of this. And how much is decisions made by Biden and his team that they either regret or mistakes they made? Or, oh, we should have done this differently, and maybe it would have been better. Like, did you get any sense of that from talking to people?

And then there was a hate crime that happened in Atlanta the next week. And they scrapped their plans for going out and talking about it because they felt it was more important to address those hate crimes. And then they never got back to that process of selling the American Rescue Plan and or only got. You know, they did it in a half-hearted sort of way, and that's just the nature of the presidency as well, is that you ricochet from crisis to crisis? And even if you come in with these intentions about how you're going to market your agenda. And correct for these mistakes that you witnessed the last time, you can only correct for so many of them when your hands are full with the next terrible thing.

Or what was the what was your take there?

I would tell you, Biden would would ace that test. I mean, the ways in which he's aged are physical, and so he's not able to go out and stump for things. Maybe in the way that he once did, his schedule is not not the same schedule that he would have had 20 years ago.

His stories, which always wandered a little bit, maybe wander a little bit more sometimes, but he's, you know, there's this flip side to the age thing, which is the wisdom, which I also think is real. Like, I do think that he's, you know, he hears all of this noise in the media about various things. And this is the thing that surprises me most about Joe Biden is I thought of him as a weathervane, but he's not.

And so when the media comes down on him hard for Afghanistan, or maybe even when they're coming down on him hard on age. Right now, he doesn't freak out and start to veer in the.

Can you say more about how you define the differences between a politician like Biden and anti-politicians like Trump or Obama?

He was this guy who came, you know? We ran a cover story in the New Republic called American Adam, that he was this guy who kind of descended. Yeah, and that's an extremely attractive archetype. And Biden? The defects of the politician is that they just reek of artificiality. That you think that they're going to say one thing in public and then do another thing in private. That that's why people don't like politicians or the stories that get repeated over and over again, there's a theatricality to the politician in authenticity.

But what I came to respect over the course of time was that Biden was able to assess the political self-interest of other actors. So, whether it's a foreign leader, whether it's Macron, whether it's Bibi Netanyahu, whether it's Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy, he's able to detach himself and say, OK, what's their political game here? What do they need in order to do their jobs effectively? And the empathy that he has allows him to understand the emotional baggage that the other person brings to the table. And I don't know if this is a fair contrast with Obama, but I feel like, you know, Obama, with kind of his fierce intelligence and like his ironic sensibility, would look at some of these other actors and just get frustrated with them.

In a way, you know, it's like he would get frustrated with Bibi Netanyahu for Bibi Netanyahu's bullshit. He would get frustrated with, you know, with a House Republican for their bullshit. I think that Biden kind of is able to at least see himself in them enough to have maybe more patience in dealing with them, if that's fair.

But if you're a Democrat, you have to be the defender of institutions that aren't working very well for people or that people are pretty upset with. And I think Obama always felt that tension as well, and I don't think it's an accident. That by the end of his presidency, when you hear, when you heard Obama talk about Joe Biden, Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi. He talked about the three of them with like, such reverence, and he had so much respect for them, and I think that respect was developed over time. And I can remember like edits to speeches where we would say, Oh, Washington's doing this and Washington's doing this. Because we had that muscle from the campaign, from the away campaign.

And he would say, you know what, I get some shit from this, from from people in Congress and the staff. By being like, I should say, I should point out that it's actually Republicans, it's not people in Washington. And so he even evolved a little bit over time, so I think he learned that from Joe Biden and then Joe Biden, sort of, you know, that's.

He's made unionism more acceptable in the country, I think he's lent his prestige to that. And then he needs to turn that into the rhetoric of populism, which he's loath to do. Because it requires having an adversarial relationship with certain forces in American life, and he's capable of doing that through policy. But his Labor Day speech last week, I think, did a pretty effective job of foreshadowing what I think would be a good campaign strategy.

I'm not, I'm a terrible political consultant.

And I've heard him do like this. To me, the Scranton Joe is like the best kind of Joe Joe Biden when he's out there on the.

How do you square that circle when you're if you're Joe Biden?

And Biden will say, No, no, no, no, like, you're probably right, but we need to model something here about how you should be go about getting something done. We need to at least be seen as trying to forge some sort of bipartisan deal. I think with you take something like Dobbs, where he has very conflicted feelings about abortion. On some level, I think he understood ultimately the radicalism of the Dobbs decision. And he also understands that abortion is going to be maybe the issue that saves the Democratic Party in the next election. Certainly did it in 2022.

But there was all this pressure to respond instantaneously, to go out to match Republican solutions with sweeping Democratic solutions. And his instinct was like, you know, let's let's back off here. He doesn't say Yo, so far as I know, let's just let's just back off here. Let's let the Republicans hoist themselves on this.

They're the ones responsible for this. Let's not give them any unnecessary beefs with us. Let's not match their their radicalism with our own radicalism, their anti-institutionalism with our own anti-institutionalism. Let's let them be portrayed as the pure villains here.

Yeah.

If there's a succession of polls that show him losing to Donald Trump, there's going to be a pretty massive Democratic freakout. And I don't know what will happen in that sort of environment.

We're doing this and we're going to help them out.

Why don't we hear from Biden? But like they, they have to find, I think, creative ways to sort of tell the story about the last two years and the next four years. Sort of in a way that that you laid out. And I think the story is there. It's just a question of, like, can they, can they get it out?

He doesn't like, he doesn't like it when he makes a mistake and then beats himself up for it. And then does the very human thing of blaming an aide for, for for the mistake that he committed himself. He is a flesh and blood human being in the best sense, right? He makes mistakes, but he's also got this very, these honorably human characteristics that you've described. And I think it's valuable for them to just restore him to being a character.

And then over time, that's just retreated.

It's fantastic and a really, really great read on what makes Joe Biden tick. I thought, so, thanks for coming on.

The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producers are Andy Gardner Bernstein and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Madeline Herringer, Ari Schwartz, Andy Taft and Justine Howe for production support.

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