So that happened… the first presidential debate of 2024 is now officially in the books, and it did not go well for President Biden. Senator Claire McCaskill and former White House Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri are joined by the Lincoln Project’s Stuart Stevens to break down everything that happened between the two candidates in Atlanta. The How to Win team looks at the state of panic among Democrats and dig into how this night will impact the next phase of the presidential campaign for both candidates.
Also, an exciting announcement! On Saturday, September 7th, MSNBC will be hosting a live event in Brooklyn called “MSNBC Live: Democracy 2024”. It will be your chance to hear thought-provoking conversations about the most pressing issues of our time, and to do so in person with some of your favorite MSNBC hosts. Visit https://dev02.ms.now/DEMOCRACY2024 to learn more.
Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Jennifer Palmieri: Hello. Welcome to “How to Win 2024.” It’s Friday, June 28th. It’s the morning after the debate. I’m Jennifer Palmieri, and I’m here with my co-host Claire McCaskill.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, that happened.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, Claire. Claire’s in Atlanta.
Claire McCaskill: That happened, and I feel like it was an earthquake. We are fortunate this morning to have a guest with us that we’re going to talk about the debate with. We’re going to be joined by Stuart Stevens, who is a senior advisor for the Lincoln Project, a former Republican strategist, and a bestselling author of “It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump.”
Welcome, Stu. We are really, really glad to have you, and maybe you can talk me off the ledge that I am on. I mean, I said last night, I mean, to me, let me just open with this, and we can go from there. Joe Biden only had one job last night, and the only job he had was to reassure people that he was up to the job at his age, and he failed miserably at that reassurance in every way you could possibly fail.
I cannot honestly say there was really anything redeeming in his performance in terms of feeling like he can handle the high-stress, high-performance job that he is running for. So I think this puts Donald Trump in the driver’s seat unless something happens. And, you know, I mean, both of you feel free to talk me out of this, but I just thought it was a disaster.
Jennifer Palmieri: Go ahead, sir.
Stuart Stevens: Well, look, first, it’s great to be with both of you all.
Jennifer Palmieri: Thank you.
Claire McCaskill: Thank you. Thank you.
Stuart Stevens: I’ve admired you from afar in many situations for many years, so it’s a real honor to be here. You know, it’s June. I think Biden had a bad night, but I don’t think the issue terrain of the race has changed. If I just woke you up in the middle of the night, Claire, and said, look, a guy from Queens out on bail is running for president. He’s bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade.
He said on stage that he didn’t have sex with a porn star. He is advocating further tax cuts for billionaires, and he’s pro-Putin. And he thinks America is the worst country in the world. How do you think he’s doing? Okay. So last night, Biden had a bad night, but I don’t think that it changes these underlying issue terrains of this race. And to me, it’s very similar to when Biden had that terrible press conference after the special counsel’s report, and everybody, you know, Ezra Klein was, you know, he should at least go out and have some sort of ritual form of suicide. It’ll be the only honorable thing to do.
And then he gave a great State of the Union, and it was back. I think the Biden campaign is going to set up some very big moments here, and those are going to be moments that Biden carries well, like he did the State of the Union, like he did Normandy, like he did Valley Forge, and Trump won’t change. This is still Trump. Biden had a bad night. Trump’s had a bad life. I don’t know. I would bet on Biden in that sense of, would you rather be your guy or the other guy? He’s always asking campaigns. I’d rather be Biden today.
Jennifer Palmieri: So, you know, I certainly agree about the nothing’s changed with Trump and the vulnerabilities that he has, and he did nothing to address his vulnerabilities last night, and we’re lucky for that. The question is that we have to look at now soberly, is Joe Biden still the best Democrat to be the person that’s taking Trump on? And, you know, this is what I am wrestling with. It’s like, is the bigger risk going with Biden, sticking with Biden?
And yeah, I agree he can do better in the future, and he can come back. But the problem is we can’t unsee what we saw, that he was really struggling. So we now know there are moments where he really struggles. We know that. And what’s the bigger risk? Because, you know, people love the drama and this, you know, sense of possibility with a fresh start. There’s so many great other Democrats. Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore, any of these people would be great.
Claire McCaskill: Kamala Harris.
Jennifer Palmieri: In theory, Kamala Harris. In theory. But we don’t know what we’re unleashing when you ask Joe Biden to step aside and the, you know, Biden-Harris money gets locked up. That can’t be spent. You got like a six-week fight for a Democratic nomination. I don’t know how that plays out. You know, I don’t know what the bigger risk is.
Stuart Stevens: Look, this is what drives me crazy about the Democrats.
Jennifer Palmieri: This is so funny. Look what’s happening right here. What’s happening right here is Stuart Stevens is defending Joe Biden as the person to stay in. I know.
Stuart Stevens: I absolutely am. This race is going to be between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. And I think that that’s not going to change. And I think that any energy expended at talking about that only helps Donald Trump win, you know. About this time in 1992, “Time” magazine ran a famous X-ray photo of Bill Clinton. Why don’t voters trust Clinton? He was in third place. He did okay. If I may say so, with all due respect, I think that there is a inner circle of Obama loyalists who suffer from sort of a love story syndrome.
Claire McCaskill: I am not one of those people.
Stuart Stevens: I know. I know, but it’s out there. And that there will never be as true and beautiful a love as it was in the summer of 2008. And everything else and everybody else is going to seem like a fourth or fifth spouse. And I get that. Truth to that. Not going to be another candidate like that in a lifetime. But I think that when you have to look at this as a choice, I think Biden will have better nights. I think Trump will have worse nights. And I think the race will move forward. And I don’t think any of the fundamental issues have changed.
Claire McCaskill: Okay, so I was definitely part of that Obama love fest. But what is striking to me is my phone, of course, started blowing up right when he said we killed Medicare and it exponentially increased over time. I quit reading or looking at the texts from people who either run for office or have ever worked in a campaign. And I started reading the texts from people that aren’t, you know, in that context, normal.
And that’s what shook me to my core. These are women who care deeply about choice. These are former lawyers I worked with who are very smart and understand what a danger Donald Trump is. And here’s what I think has happened here. Two things. First, how did we get here? Well, we got here, I remember acutely Joe Biden saying, I’m doing this to pass the torch. This is about me being a bridge to the younger generation.
And somewhere along the line, what happens often in the Oval, there was a decision made, well, this is going so well, we’re going to do it again, even at the advanced age that he possesses. Democrats all over, and I know General backed me up on this, had real concerns about Joe Biden running for another term. But you know what, Stu? We all said Trump is too big a risk for us to have a fight.
Stuart Stevens: Right.
Claire McCaskill: We cannot risk Trump. So we can’t fight over who our nominee is. So we are all going to coalesce behind Joe Biden because obviously —
Jennifer Palmieri: And the candidates said that. You know, it’s important to know, Claire, it’s like the would-be candidates, if they had thought they could win —
Claire McCaskill: Yes. Yes.
Jennifer Palmieri: — they would have stood up and done it and they didn’t do it.
Claire McCaskill: So there was an assumption there that Joe Biden’s inner staff and his family were one hundred percent confident that we would not have any crisis of physical and mental competency before November. Okay, so we’d all got behind Joe Biden. It’s all because of Donald Trump. OK, so now fast forward and this happened. And it’s one thing to have a bad debate, Stuart. It’s one thing to have an Obama crash in ‘12. Even to sweat like Richard Nixon.
It’s a completely different thing for someone to appear that they cannot hold the highest stress job on the planet and that he would need help in meetings and that he is having difficulty forming complete thoughts and that he would somehow think it’s a good idea when asked the biggest softball of all about choice in America. He brings up the murder of an immigrant girl and that Trump went to the funeral. So all of this happened and people saw it. People that aren’t like us that do know he surrounded himself with really good people. And I’m sure Joe Biden still has really good judgment and is making the right decisions when presented with all the alternatives.
Now, the threat is that once again, we put Trump in a position while he’s leading, I might add, to win. And by the way, the fact that this race is competitive should scare the bejesus out of everybody. And it is competitive by and large, I believe, because there are still people that were not convinced before last night and certainly are not convinced now that Joe Biden can handle this job for another four years, that he’ll never make it another four years.
Now, that’s where I am. How do you fix this? What do you come out? Do you give all your medical records?
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: You come out and you have a press conference and say any questions fair? Because I guarantee you this, Donald Trump’s not going to debate him between now and the convention. This is a window that is only going to be open for 30 days. And you know what I think the Trump campaign is going to do? I’ll save it till later in the podcast. I’ll tell you what I think the Trump campaign is going to do, because Jen and I always do on this podcast if I were in the room, and we always talk about what we would be stressing to campaigns that would be strategic.
Stuart Stevens: Right.
Claire McCaskill: Sometime before we sign off today, I want to do if I were in the room with Republicans, because I think I know what’s going on over there right now.
Stuart Stevens: Yeah, look, a lot of times in campaigns when you’re running in a series of primaries, like in a presidential race, and you have bad nights and you suck and you lose a primary overwhelmingly, there’s just sort of nothing you can do but win. That’s the only way you can dig your way out of this. And I think that the way that they dig their way out of this is by showing that Joe Biden is still up for being a great president.
You don’t have a record like he’s had if you’re an incompetent president. You don’t have a record like you have if you’re not up to leading the country. You’re not sitting down with world leaders and being able to organize their support for existential war in Ukraine if you’re not up for being president. So, that’s a pretty good resume, and he had a really bad job interview, and he’s got to do better. But I think he can do better, because we know for a fact that Joe Biden is up for being president, or the presidency would be a disaster.
So I think that you have to just kind of say, okay, bad night. Don’t try to sugarcoat it. Biden’s got to do better. And Trump is going to go out there and be talking about sharks and batteries and how proud of banning Roe v. Wade. So, I think you have to just tough it out.
Claire McCaskill: And why, Stuart? Let’s just walk through for people, like, why you think it’s better to stay with the candidate we have now and not entertain? Because I think that it’s a very daunting thought to consider what would happen if Biden stepped aside at this point. So can you walk us through that?
Stuart Stevens: This to me harkens back to McGovern-Eagleton, I think.
Claire McCaskill: That’s great.
Stuart Stevens: I think the idea that a party picked a president and then they go, oops, we’re going to go with someone else, I think it’s just unsustainable. There is no mechanism, no history of this. I think that you’re just in uncharted waters that has such a low chance of success on so many levels that it’s better to discard that option and just move forward and fight.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah. I mean, you have the smell of, like, defeat then all around Democrats. I think it might feel good in the moment to say Biden should step aside, and it’s a sense of possibility, but it might just feel like, oh, chaos, dysfunction, defeat. It could feel like that. I don’t know.
Stuart Stevens: Yeah. It’s not, you know, the Al Smith convention where you can go and pick on the 38th ballot and come up with someone. If I were in the Democratic Party, God help us, I would be about the business of rallying Democrats around Joe Biden.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Stuart Stevens: I thought that Gavin Newsom did a great job last night.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Stuart Stevens: I thought Warnock did a great job last night. I thought the vice president did. That’s what you need to be out there saying, and you need to say it loud. And I don’t believe that anything happened last night that is not recoverable by this campaign given this dynamic.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, I get it. I mean, Trump is a double-edged sword. I mean, Trump is the only person, I believe, that Joe Biden could beat. But on the other hand, Biden, I believe, is certainly maybe the only person that Trump can beat. And, we’ll see, we’ll see what happens over the next few days. I mean, there’s going to be an awful lot of polling data that’s going to drop in about 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. It will happen over the next rolling, over the next probably four to five days.
And we’ll see if the lead that Trump has now in every battleground state, Trump on the last polls led in every battleground state, if in fact it looks like the race is still right there within the margin of error everywhere after this. And I get that it’s not helpful for me to talk like this, but I only do it because I care so much. I love this guy. I love Joe Biden. I love who he is. I love how he served. But I got to tell you, you know, for somebody who has dealt with cognitive issues with someone I love, things can happen quickly.
Joe Biden is not the same candidate he was four years ago. And if we are continuing to say that, most voters would not think that we were honest about our assessments. I’m not saying that he can’t overcome this. I’m saying that I don’t believe what happened on the stage to Joe Biden last night ever would have happened four years ago, not in a million trillion years. And when you get to Joe Biden’s age, sometime decline does happen.
And it happens more quickly sometimes than people who are around that person realize, unless you’re very close to that person. So I just think that’s a possibility we have to consider when we realize what’s around the corner, four years of insanity of Donald Trump. And I get it that it wouldn’t be clean or whatever, but it is possible that the Biden family would decide to withdraw and pledge their support to candidate blank.
And I could see there being a handoff that could, especially because people would be so, have so much affection for Joe Biden in that moment. Right now, most of the people I know that are involved in democratic politics feel nothing but heartache for this man.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: I mean, they’re hurting for him. I can get emotional talking about it. It’s just, you know, it’s so hard that he has worked this hard and done so much. It’s hard. And I just think that affection for him, if he decided to do this and decided who he thought would be the best person, I think the party would respect it. And I don’t think it would be a back-room cutthroat deal at the convention. I really don’t. But I could definitely be wrong. One hundred percent.
Stuart Stevens: It’s just unimaginable to me. It feels like a fantasy football, who you’re going to draft to be on your team.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Stuart Stevens: And I don’t see if they went that road, how it could be anyone else but the vice president. You know, she’s the vice president of the United States. More people voted for her than any woman in the history of American politics. You’re going to say she shouldn’t be president. So Biden and American people thought she was equipped to be president or she wouldn’t have been elected vice president.
I think Democrats just have to come together. And this isn’t supposed to be easy. The country is in a very dark place. But you have to just bet. Do you really think people believe that America is the worst country in the world? Do people really believe that a president who clearly wants to carry the repeal of Roe v. Wade further is somebody they want as president?
And just don’t forget, Trump had moments last night when he looked semi-together, but he’s going to be out there ranting about Hannibal Lecter. I mean, that is a guy who I think is in a much more rapid decline. I go with this theory. I think Joe Biden is aging in a normal aging way. And I think you’re right. He has aged. Of course, he has. But I think that when you look at the strange twists and turns that Trump takes and the way his mind goes and the weirdnesses, I think there’s something much darker happening there. So let’s just play a game. How much do you think the polls will change?
Claire McCaskill: So I don’t know the polls will change at all because I think the American people saw what they expected to see last night because the American people, I mean, I expected to see better from Joe Biden. But I think the public at large had been buying into the notion that he wasn’t doing well because all they ever see are clips on social media about how he’s not doing well, right? But he needed to change the polls. So I don’t know.
I mean, if the polls do change dramatically in Trump’s favor, I think that is a very big sign. But I think that they might not change dramatically because it was already baked in. You know, a friend of mine did a focus group in Phoenix last night of undecideds. At the end of the focus group, nine were for Biden, nine were for Trump, and four were for a third party.
Stuart Stevens: There you go. So, look, Bush lost five, six points to Kerry after the first debate between where he went down, and Kerry went up.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Stuart Stevens: Obama did the same with Romney. And they didn’t have very long to recover. We’re in June. You know, I always go back to I don’t think there’s three people in America that can tell you what the lead story on the news was last Wednesday. And we will move on. And it’s up to the Biden campaign to put together situations in which the president will look much better.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Stuart Stevens: And if that is impossible, that would be very dark. But we know that’s not possible because he’s had those moments. And if the image in your head when you walk into the booth is Joe Biden at the State of the Union, Joe Biden at Normandy, Joe Biden hugging a kid who is disabled, if those are the images, Joe Biden will win. If it’s the images that were in your head from last night, probably won’t win.
But there’s no reason why those images have to be those that are being carried by the non-MAGA part of this country, which is 65 percent of the country. So I don’t know. I’d rather be Biden today than Trump.
Jennifer Palmieri: Let’s take a quick break. And Stu, please stick with us. When we’re back, we’ll talk about the vice president and what her role should be now in the campaign and dig into some of the actual issues from the debate. We’ll be right back.
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Jennifer Palmieri: Welcome back. Our guest, Stuart Stevens, is still with us. He’s a senior advisor with the Lincoln Project and a former Republican strategist, still a strategist, just a former Republican. And because Democrats fret and Republicans back their guy, Stuart is the one here who is bucking us up that Biden should remain the nominee because that’s the best option.
Stuart, one question I have, I want to talk about, we’ll get to like specific moments in the debate where Trump is particularly bad that, you know, the campaign should be made, the campaign should be driving. But I’m wondering what you think the vice president should do now. A lot of the public think that Biden will not make it through a second term. Terrible to say, —
Stuart Stevens: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Palmieri: — but we’re just trying to ferret out what the best thing to do here is. She was great last night. Do you think that she should have more of a public role? We should see her more. She should be doing more interviews.
Stuart Stevens: I think they probably have an on-ramp process for her to do more and more. I think she’s been used where she’s particularly effective. I’ve never understood this negativity toward Vice President Harris.
Jennifer Palmieri: Oh, I wrote two books about it.
Claire McCaskill: Me either. It’s ridiculous.
Stuart Stevens: I mean —
Claire McCaskill: I understand it.
Stuart Stevens: Just in a political sense, she went out and she beat a sitting D.A. in San Francisco in a primary. That’s not easy to do. She did so well, nobody ran against her. She then went out and beat the golden boy of California politics, not since Arnold Schwarzenegger. It could have been anybody. The guy who was so good, he could get elected D.A. in LA County and went out and beat that guy.
And then she was elected vice president of the United States. And that’s a terrible politician? I don’t know.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Stuart Stevens: I just don’t see it. I think she’s been a very solid vice president. As a candidate for vice president, there’s always three moments when you get picked. How do you handle that? So you’re not Dan Quayle getting picked off Bourbon Street. How do you handle your acceptance speech? And how do you handle your debate? And she did all three well. And I think that she has an emotional connection with certain segments of the electorate that’s very, very powerful. So I would just keep using her in that way.
Look, here’s a fundamental question. Is there a board of a Fortune 500 company that wouldn’t want Kamala Harris on it or ask her to be a CEO? No. Is there one that would ask Donald Trump to be on it? No. It is against the law, I think it’s true, in every state in America, if you try to hire Donald Trump as a principal of a school, and we’re going to put that guy as president. And I think that’s why you have to run the race.
Claire McCaskill: Why don’t we do this? Let’s run a little tape of some of the biggest, most blatant, gross, disgusting lies that were told last night. And by the way, there’s, I think, 30 different fact-checked big lies that Trump said in about 38 minutes. So he was running almost one a minute, you know, while he was speaking. But let’s run some of the tape on some of the worst. And then we’ll talk about some of the issues.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
Donald Trump: They talk about a relatively small number of people that went to the Capitol, and in many cases were ushered in by the police.
I offered her 10,000 soldiers or National Guard, and she turned them down.
He wants to raise your taxes by four times. He wants to raise everybody’s taxes by four times.
During my four years, I had the best environmental numbers.
They were radical because they will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth, after birth. You had Roe v. Wade, and everybody wanted to get it back to the states. Everybody, without exception. Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, everybody wanted it back.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
Claire McCaskill: Okay, so obviously choice, you know, painful that he missed a layup there.
Jennifer Palmieri: That Biden did.
Claire McCaskill: Biden missed a layup.
Jennifer Palmieri: Use your VP’s language. Trump abortion bans.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, exactly. Trump abortion ban. And, you know, inexplicably wandered off onto immigration in the death of a young woman who Trump went to the funeral. But it’s still, I think the debate did some good in reminding people that Trump thinks somehow, and when he says things, when he lies in ways that people fundamentally feel are lies, like, well, everybody wanted Roe v. Wade to be overturned. Well, all the legal scholars thought it was a good thing, and everybody wants it to go back to the states.
Well, talk to the women in states like mine. No, they do not want it to go back to the states. And I thought on that issue, Trump and a couple of others, Trump went so far in his lies, it really did hurt him in terms of being seen as someone who has even had any kind of credibility whatsoever.
Stuart Stevens: You know, I think there were a lot of missed opportunities for Joe Biden, but I think that there were tremendous missed opportunities for Donald Trump. So just imagine a Donald Trump who came out and said, here is what I’m going to do as president, and laid out positive things that people wanted done. It could be some sort of economic plan. It could be something that would try to speak to those at the lower income.
He could have gone out and said, you know, we did these tax cuts, it spurred the economy, but when I get in, I’m not going to cut taxes more for billionaires. I’m not. I’m going to cut your taxes. He could have laid all of that out. He didn’t. And this is what I go back to. So I think these Senate candidates are underperforming, Republican Senate candidates are underperforming.
What is the bargain that the Republican Party is striking with voters now? What do you get when you get the Republican Party? And for the life of me, I can’t answer that. It’s predicated upon this idea that the country is going to hell. It’s a worst country in the world. And what troubles them the most, the record stock market or the record low unemployment? This is just not the experience people are having in America. And I think that there’s a disconnect between that.
Compare it to like the morning in America approach of Reagan. You know, he went out and said, okay, things aren’t great, but we’re getting better. Trump could have said the same sort of thing. Like, I think that we can do better. I think there’s some good things that have been happening, but we can do better. He’s really attacking what it means to be an American.
Claire McCaskill: Right.
Stuart Stevens: You know, say what you will about Ronald Reagan. When you were born in Reagan’s America, his view was you had won life’s lottery and there were inequalities, certainly, but no one was disadvantaged in life from having been born in America. And for Donald Trump, he’s completely changed that relationship between you and your citizenship. You are now a sucker. You are now being taken advantage of by these powerful forces in the world out there like Canada.
And we’re chumps. And he’s going to even the score. In the Olympics, right? When you see the flag come into the stadium, people are going to go, yeah, we’re the worst country in the world, and I’m cheering for you. I don’t know. I think it is a very strange place to be running to lead a country that you’re attacking. And I think that is something that Trump isn’t going to change.
It’s a predicate of his election. He’s the same as Putin. I can justify this because Zelenskyy’s a Nazi and he’s not a Nazi, but the country isn’t terrible. So I think those are the experiences that people live. And I don’t think there’s anything that draws new voters to Trump other than disappointment in Biden. And I think ultimately that’s not a game changer.
Claire McCaskill: Another issue I want to mention, Trump had his big lie about abortion. Everyone wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade. No, no one did. No one unlifted. But then his Jan. 6 answer was very disturbing. Not only was it Nancy Pelosi’s fault, but Nancy Pelosi owned Jan. 6 as her mistake. What do you think the Biden campaign does with that answer? And, you know, it’s like you got to pick something up and start a new fight. That is what Biden campaign needs to do today. Is it the Jan 6 answer? Is that the fight?
Stuart Stevens: I would go with abortion if I was in the Biden campaign. I think that that truly was a shift in American politics like we haven’t seen probably since, you know, Brown v. Board of Education. And I think in these moments when you’re in trouble in campaigns, you have to take your best player and run your best play and just let it go. And you keep running that until it doesn’t work.
And that is going to work. And when this race becomes a referendum on abortion, when it becomes a referendum on whether or not you think January 6 was Nancy Pelosi’s fault or a bunch of whack jobs in Camp Auschwitz sweatshirts that Donald Trump encouraged and wants to pardon, you know. That’s what you got to get the race back to. And look, in the Lincoln Project, this is why we were invented. We’re going to rip Donald Trump’s head off and hand it to him on a plate and go after him for these incredibly disturbing moments he has.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Stuart Stevens: And the general meanness of Donald Trump, I think what ultimately is Donald Trump’s greatest weakness is how Donald Trump makes you feel. He is someone who has a demand to constantly be in your face and a demand that you be as angry as he is. And most people aren’t.
Claire McCaskill: I thought, honestly, that the immigration portion of the debate wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. I thought Biden did deflect effectively on differences between what he’s done on the border by executive action and what Trump did on the border by executive action. I don’t think it sells to the double haters or the undecideds that the biggest problem facing America are people who are coming here to want to work hard and support their families from another country. I just don’t buy that.
Stuart Stevens: And there’s a lot of data to back that up, Claire.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Stuart Stevens: You know, the Marist poll is one that I go back to a lot because they are very good publicly available crosstabs. So if you look at their latest poll, which is about a week ago, of those who are supporting Joe Biden, preserving democracy by 50 percent is their number one issue. Immigration by 3 percent. So the voters that Trump is talking to on immigration, they’re already Trump voters.
Claire McCaskill: Right, exactly.
Stuart Stevens: Immigration is the number one issue for them at 35 percent. And preserving democracy is at 11 percent for Trump voters. So they’re talking to two very different Americas. And I don’t think most people walking around in this country wake up worried about immigration. I think they see it on television, it looks bad. But I think the larger issues that Biden can make this campaign about, the one thing that we know about campaigns is if you want people to care about an issue, you have to care about it.
So everybody said you couldn’t make democracy an issue, you can’t eat democracy, you can’t fill your car with democracy. But democracy to the Biden voters is a 50 percent, their number one issue. And I think that’s the path to winning.
Claire McCaskill: And I actually think democracy is a stand-in word for somebody who is not going to contest a free election —
Stuart Stevens: Yup.
Claire McCaskill: — who is not going to try to hold on to power when he’s been rejected by the voters. Somebody who is not going to claim he won when he didn’t, and someone who’s not going to work hard to keep people from voting when everyone should have an opportunity to vote even more so. And someone who is not all in with the worst anti-democracy leaders in the world. So I think all that works. Okay, we’re gonna take another short break here. But Stu, please stick around after the break.
We’re gonna look ahead at what happens next for Democrats. If our friend that used to be a Republican is right, then it’s a matter of rebuilding and recovering. But I do think we owe it to a whole lot of people. If not anything else, it will save me from having to answer every single fricking text message I’ve received in the last 12 hours, which are a lot. So we’ll be back right after the break.
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Jennifer Palmieri: Welcome back. We’ve been speaking with Stuart Stevens. So we’ve been talking about this, everybody’s talking about this, is that whether Democrats should replace Biden, whether they even can replace Biden. Let’s talk about the mechanics of how if this were to happen, how it would happen. First of all, Biden would need to drop out because the way this works is currently, he has pledged delegates, delegates from going through the primary elections.
Delegates are required, they’re bound to vote for Joe Biden on the first ballot, and he has enough votes to win that first ballot. So the only way anything happens is if Joe Biden himself says he is not going to run. Claire has laid out the scenario that he says he’s not going to run, and he endorses the VP under that scenario. I think the country does unite behind the VP, and then we’re off to the races with that.
The other scenario is Joe Biden drops out and says, I’m going to let the party decide this. I’m going to focus on being president, a critical time, blah, blah, blah, LBJ, 1968. That worked out great. And then the Democrats, some measure of Democrats put their hat in the ring. I expect the vice president would lead in the public polling on that. She’s the most well-known. She’s the one who’s been doing the job as vice president.
But, you know, maybe you have three candidates, and they fight it out publicly for a few weeks, and then they head into Chicago and work the delegations to get support. And then you had the superdelegates who could get behind one of these candidates.
Stuart Stevens: I want the rights to this miniseries.
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Stuart Stevens: Because it would be fascinating to watch.
Jennifer Palmieri: Democrats like that, too. You know, we like the drama and you guys don’t. So that is part of the reason why I think, you know, you have our team like, speculating a lot about if this should happen and how it would happen.
Claire McCaskill: There’s three scenarios. Joe Biden remains the nominee and fights like hell and convinces the country that he is physically and mentally capable of doing this job. B, is he says, I have decided that just the stamina that is needed and my age and I’ve got family I love desperately? I think it’s time. I did say I wanted to pass the torch and I passed the torch to my vice president, Kamala Harris, and support her for president.
The ease of number two is all the money goes over because she is on the ticket.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yes.
Claire McCaskill: Am I right about that, Jen?
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, I should have added that the Biden-Harris campaign has a lot of money. That is not the Democratic nominee’s money. That is the Biden-Harris campaign’s money at this point.
Claire McCaskill: Right.
Jennifer Palmieri: So if the president dropped out, that money kind of gets locked. Now, I think that if Harris becomes the nominee or if he endorses Harris, I think the campaign can continue to operate as Biden-Harris, even though like Biden’s not really there. But otherwise, that money is going to get locked and it’s not available. And we spend seven weeks with no money.
Now, there’ll be a ton of earned media. It’s not like people won’t be hearing about how Trump is terrible and how the Democrats are better. But you’re going to hear Democrats, you know, fighting with each other. It could create a big sense of energy around, you know, an excitement like that is possible.
Claire McCaskill: Think about the timing of that. I mean, the timing of it. First of all, it completely wipes Trump off, which is not necessarily a good thing. Takes him off the front pages for at least 30 days leading into the convention and during the convention, because if, in fact, it was going to be open convention and if this was going to be everybody scrambling to get enough votes to get to the next ballot. I would say this. It would end forever the discussion of why do we still have conventions anymore?
You know, because they have become expensive, probably not that effective ways to do messaging. And it would be an open, good old fashioned, these are party faithful and they’re going to vote. There won’t be a smoke-filled room. There will be people going to the various delegations and giving their pitches. And I mean, you’re right, it sounds like fantasy. But those are the three. And I’m not sure which door is going to emerge. Door number one, door number two or door number three. Stuart, you firmly believe in door number one. I am fine with door number two. And door number three is intriguing.
Stuart Stevens: I don’t know where to begin with this. It’s just it’s like, you know, I feel like you’re sitting in the bleachers and it’s the first quarter of the Super Bowl and the quarterback’s not having great and you get a call saying, okay, who do you want to put in?
Jennifer Palmieri: That was fair to say in February. This is a little different. It’s halftime.
Stuart Stevens: Well, I don’t know about that.
Claire McCaskill: It’s definitely halftime. He’s got the nomination. This is not early in the game. Anyway.
Stuart Stevens: It’s inevitable that this is going to be a process that the party is going to go through. So, I mean, it’s going to turn on this —
Jennifer Palmieri: For a while.
Stuart Stevens: Yeah, for a while.
Jennifer Palmieri: Let’s judge. Turn on it for a week, get it over and like then get his back, you know, like let’s exhaust the possibilities and be certain that this is the right way and move forward.
Stuart Stevens: Yeah. I mean, if, you know, I was a Democratic congressman or a senator or governor or something, you know, I would just tell my staff, you know, do not talk about this. Go out and talk about why Joe Biden has been a great president and will continue to be a great president.
Jennifer Palmieri: And why Trump is terrible.
Stuart Stevens: And why Trump is an existential danger to America. Don’t go down this way. But it’s going to happen, I guess and I —
Jennifer Palmieri: Oh, it is happening. I mean, it’s happening.
Stuart Stevens: It is happening.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Stuart Stevens: You can’t stop it, so —
Jennifer Palmieri: Let’s have it out. Let’s have it out. And if Biden comes back strong from this, then he’s like, you know —
Claire McCaskill: And he’s a great position. Joe Biden has fought back again as he has throughout his whole life.
Stuart Stevens: Great comeback story.
Claire McCaskill: It’s a great comeback story. So, I’m not saying that I’m convinced door number one is a nonstarter. I am not saying that. And I know people all over social media are on me saying that is what I’m saying. And I get it that they think that my honest assessment of what happened last night is not helpful.
But that’s the beauty of not being a surrogate anymore and being an analyst for a network and never having to run for office again. I get to say what I honestly think and damn the consequences. So I’ll take all the incoming because I felt last night that it was really important for me to be honest about what I was feeling and what I was seeing. And we’ll see. Well, let me take a turnaround what I think may happen in the Trump campaign.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. This is Claire saying if she were in the room with the Trump campaign.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, I know the feeling they’re having this morning because when Todd Akin said what he said back in the days for saying crazy things disqualified you as a Republican.
Jennifer Palmieri: Remind us of who Todd Akin is, because not everybody knows.
Claire McCaskill: Todd Akin was my opponent in 2012, a race I had no business winning. And he was nominated, and we knew he would say stuff that was weird. And it turned out he said something very weird. And that was that if a woman is raped, she has a way of shutting down any pregnancy or, as I later called it, the magic vagina. And so he said this on an interview. And you could imagine the backlash immediately.
And Romney and McCain, everyone said, don’t come to the convention. We don’t want you at the convention. They distanced himself from him as a candidate. What everybody should have done around Donald Trump. And that’s why —
Stuart Stevens: Knowing they were going to lose defeat.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah. And Stuart Stevens, by the way, you would still be a Republican if they had done to Donald Trump what the Republican Party did to Todd Akin. So, they were all doing that. And all of a sudden, I realized phone calls were being made to try to get Ann Wagner in the race and it wasn’t going to be Todd Akin anymore. So the beep, beep, beep, beep, I was thinking, okay, I’ve got to keep Todd Akin in this race. What can I do to keep Todd Akin in this race?
I will not be surprised if you see the Trump campaign and even the lack of discipline, Donald Trump, not doing rallies, not putting out video that is totally taunting. Joe Biden trying to soft pedal this until he officially has the nomination, and the convention is over. And then we will see the clips of the debate with paid for not on media but paid for. I’m in Georgia, right? I’ve been watching TV. They already have dementia all over the TV in Georgia associated with Joe Biden.
Jennifer Palmieri: Claire makes an excellent point, friends.
Claire McCaskill: I think they are hoping that they can keep Joe Biden in the race, and I’m not sure that’s the best of all signs. So, that’s what I think is going on there.
Jennifer Palmieri: That makes sense. Okay, Stuart, I was there in 2012 on the other side of you when Obama had his terrible first debate. You’re Governor Romney’s strategist. You know, we knew how to recover for Obama. What would you do if you were in the room in Biden campaign now about what what’s the fight they start now? What do they do now?
Stuart Stevens: I think Biden, they need to put together a big event where Biden is going to be good and they need to erase that image that was in the head last night of a bad debate. Biden has proven he can get up to those moments. And I would go at Donald Trump for his criminality. I don’t think it was talked about enough last night.
Jennifer Palmieri: Why is that?
Stuart Stevens: And I think that this idea, I keep going back to this, not a public school system in America could hire Donald Trump to be a teacher and you wanted to be president of the United States. I think that you have to prosecute Trump. And that’s what I wish had happened last night. But that’s the path to victory, I think. We know how well Trump does when he does get prosecuted, and the facts are put out there. So far, he’s not doing so well. And I think those juries are reflective of the American public, pretty much like juries are. So I would just go right at that.
Jennifer Palmieri: Stuart Stevens, we really appreciate it.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah. Thank you. You were the perfect guest. You actually made me feel slightly better on a day that I didn’t think I was capable of being better.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: So, look, I don’t fault Democrats for fretting and even bedwetting because we know there’s a lot at stake. And frankly, I mean, no offense to, you know, particularly Stuart, who’s like been on, you know, Team Democracy for a while now. But it’s like Democrats, we fight, we overthink things, we stress out. But we’re why the Republic is still standing.
Stuart Stevens: The only pro-democracy party in America.
Jennifer Palmieri: There you go.
Claire McCaskill: Blindly following your leader without questioning whether or not it’s the right thing to do is not a good idea. But what’s great is to have you on to remind us where we are in the cycle, what’s really happening here. And as this podcast is called, “How to Win in 2024.” And we got our guy and you got to have his back because if this is the best way to move forward, that is what we got to do and just deal with the threat that Trump is.
Stuart Stevens is a former chief Republican strategist, a senior advisor for Lincoln Project and the author of eight books, including “It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump.” Thanks again for joining us. We really appreciate it.
Stuart Stevens: Thanks for asking me.
Jennifer Palmieri: Thanks so much for listening. Before we go, we have an exciting announcement. On Saturday, September 7th, MSNBC will be hosting a live event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It’s called “MSNBC Live: Democracy 2024.” And this premiere event is all to celebrate our fans. MSNBCs fantastic audience. It will be your chance to hear thought provoking conversations about the most pressing issues of our time and to do so in person with some of your favorite MSNBC hosts. Visit msnbc.com/democracy2024 for more. We’ll also drop a link in our show notes and hope to see you there.
Claire McCaskill: This episode was produced by Vicki Vergolina and Max Jacobs with production support from Alisha Conley. Janmaris Perez is our associate producer. Katherine Anderson and Bob Mallory are our audio engineers. Our head of audio production is Bryson Barnes. Aisha Turner is the executive producer for MSNBC Audio and Rebecca Kutler is the senior vice president for content strategy at MSNBC. Search for “How to Win 2024” wherever you get your podcasts and follow the series.