Season 2, Episode 6: David Axelrod, Amy Walter and David Wasserman at the RNC

the AUD years is brought to you by the cook political Report Team it's our way of sharing the questions we love to ask and the conversations we enjoy having behind the scenes if you'd like to explore more of what we have to offer consider subscribing at Cook political.com slss subscribe audier listeners can use the discount code odd1 that's OD the number 10 to save 10% on any subscription this offer is available only to new subscribers [Music] are The Davids ready yeah okay hello and welcome we are here in Milwaukee Wisconsin with the can I say intimida David oxar Rod is that a good intimidate and you're not intimidate you're I'm with the August leadership of political report we have two Davids here David alod David waserman we are talking today on Tuesday we've only had one day of the RNC but we wanted to check in with David oxar to get his take both on what he thinks the RNC has how that has gone what it tells us about the Republican party going forward for these next couple of months and then of course all of the mishas on the Democratic side so David aarod you want to start with what you think so far of the RNC and the JD vs pick um I think the operative word here is confidence I think this is a confident crowd um you know there used to be a a speaker of the uh of the Illinois house named Paul Powell who became famous later when Secretary of State and he died and they found $800,000 in shoe boxes in his hotel room in Springfield but um I digress but Paul pal used to say when they had a legislative deal that looked like it was going to come together he he would say I smell the meat of cooking I think these Republican delegates smell the meat a cooking they think that they're going to win so this has a very celebrity celebrative feel uh to it in a way that one wouldn't have predicted you know at the beginning of this year and um uh I I was talking to Tim Alberta from the Atlantic on my own uh ax files oh no it's hack on tap podcast today and um you know Tim said it feels less like a Unity event than a surrender uh Donald this is Donald Trump's party thoroughly and of course the the events of the weekend uh gave it this sort of larger feel um you know a lot of these delegates uh you know they believe that he was sent here by God you know to uh that he's God's candidate and now they feel like God spared him I mean it's really quite something I mean I just you know when he walked into that room last night that Arena sober as he was was pretty pretty uh remarkable as to the convention itself first of all you know I don't know how people are consuming it and maybe social media bites were good I it just reminded me how much of an anachronism these conventions are speech after speech after speech you know they took care they did what you do they put sort of most of their or troubling speakers early you know margerie Taylor green and so on they cre time before Prime Time when the networks pick up uh it was interesting that they spent a lot of time time appealing to Black voters because part of the story of this election is that Donald Trump is just doing far better particularly with younger black voters and particularly with young black men and they had a bunch of U black men speaking uh Tim Scott John James the congressman from Michigan one thing that I'm the only one I think who thought this was that significant but it was interesting to me strategically both of them made the point that they felt like like the Biden Administration has treated illegal immigrants better than they have local communities in their communities you know Tim Scott said you know they give illegal immigrants hotel rooms and Veterans sleep on the street uh this is a theme that's coursing through these communities you know there's a real tension in the African-American Community about this issue and and frankly in some of the Hispanic communities there's an issue about so you know they presented themselves as this Multicultural new populist Democratic party and so from a messaging standpoint uh it was interesting but the big thing was Vance and that to me reflected the confidence of the Republican party because if you were worried about the election you'd probably make a a more conventional Choice uh that was bergam um and I you know from all the reporting they were headed that way and now now instead of thinking about a squeaker they're thinking about a landslide and so they could be more venturesome and you know Vance is a guy who're they're making a generational play not just an election play I think their thought is his populism kind of helps up there in the Upper Midwest where the last remnants of Hope for Biden exist but you know clearly they he's they want to keep the franchise going and he they've decided he's the guy it's a bet uh Tucker Carlson believes he can do it Don Jor believes he can do it he still has to do it and we'll see what happens when he gets into that extraordinary pressure cooker that is National politics having not run that greater race to win election back in 2022 I mean Trump propelled him into the race and then the Democratic senatorial Campaign Committee had a rush in $30 million at the end to save him against Tim Ryan who is an excellent candidate on the Democratic side so we'll see we'll see what happens that's right and it also creates this interesting dilemma for Democrats do they try and make Vance as much of a pariah in their messaging as As Trump do they go after what he said about Trump in 2016 as a means of of showing just the the depth of skepticism that he had about Trump and trying persuade voters with that or do they talk about the policies he's advocated during his very short tenure in the Senate so far which on several issues are to the right of where Trump has been with regard to foreign policy and abortion I actually think that going after some of his past statements his broadsides against Trump from seven eight years ago it speaks to how many Minds have changed on the Republican side with regard to Trump and just how much more united this party is today than it was four or eight years ago yeah it'll be interesting to see I I he was on uh with Hannity last night I think and his answer was um that uh he was misled by false media reporting on Trump and that's why he uh you know because of course no one saw Trump speaking in his own words back in 2006 at those 2hour Town Halls that everybody watched but uh uh but that's what he's going to that's what he's going to say and yes I mean in some ways you want to create a permission structure for people who were uncertain to you know and so that's they going to be their argument I do think Democrats are going to use those I mean you know calling a guy an American Hitler maybe he met it in a nice way I don't know but I don't think so I uh but that permission structure kind of goes two ways too doesn't it David which is that um they're trying to also make the case that a lot of people have been converted to Donald Trump that even if you were skeptical of maybe in 2016 or 2020 look at look at how much better the economy was look at how much safer our borders were I know you maybe like JD Vance you thought this guy's you know doesn't have the Char character to do this job but now looking at at where his policies were back then maybe you can yeah give him another shot yeah I I do think this whole race we were talking before um I think this whole race from the beginning from their perspective has been about one thing which is the world's out of control uh the Biden is not in command he's weak Trump's strong vote Trump that's basically been their message from the beginning that's been one of the challenges here because they've had a discernable message right from the beginning that's easy to understand and and Biden's still searching uh for his but the the problem that Biden faces now is this message has been crystallized by two events the debate and the assassination attempt and two images Biden struggling at that microphone and Trump uh you know fighting with Secret Service agents who wanted to Spirit him at away from the shooting scene and thrusting his hand in the air and by the way just the right place for photographers to get that heroic poster shot with the flag in the background with the flag I mean you know Donald Trump has many many deficiencies some of them profound and frightening in a future president but when it comes to marketing himself the guy's an incomparable genius and the fact that that was his Instinct in a moment right after he had been shot speaks to just how pronatural that instinct is and speaking of flailing for a message you know we saw Ronda santis and Nikki Haley and Trump's other primary opponents their pollsters pretty much admitting publicly look we're throwing the kitchen sink at Trump and nothing's working and and in a way what we're seeing from the Biden campaign now feels similar because they may be running out of effective messages here they've had a massive spending advantage in these seven states where they've been basically unilaterally up on the air for the last several months and now spending is going to be at parody Or potentially even in Trump fa it will be in Trump's favor and you know Biden could argue for could try to move the need uh for for the last several months he's been trying to make voters feel better about the state of the economy that hasn't moved the needle in these swing States pretty much his his last straw has been this theme of Chaos versus stability and now that's completely shot so where where do Democrats go that's a really good question I think a lot of Democrats are pondering that now listen I I think history is going to be a lot kinder to Joe Biden about his presidential years than voters are right now and I I think he's done some historically important things but people don't vote so much about the past they vote about the future and they don't think he has won they think that he is spent I keep saying you know Tom Brady was a great quarterback and Tom Brady won a Super Bowl three years ago and he's out of football why because he got too old I mean he can't he can't throw the ball the way he threw the all a few years ago um and that's what people think about the president they don't and and that's really hard to overcome and when you have to go out and answer questions all the time about whether you have the capacity to serve and that's the focus of people's attention very hard to shift the focus to the other guy and when you're an embattled incumbent and he is uh you have to shift the focus to the other guy so he's in a very tough spot and he needs to consider what his viability is now because if he believes as I'm sure he does because I do and I think lots of people do that there are profound profound implications for the country in the future if Trump wins if he thinks the stakes are that high and he believes he can't win then you know the obvious answer would be well maybe someone else can and I'm going to step aside but time is running out for that and he's not showing any indication right now that he accepts that he can't win or that he's going to step aside and if he doesn't we'll see it feels like this Dynamic is set and that it's very going to be very hard to disrupt and and then we look forward to a DNC that's going to feel if this was a celebratory experience is the DNC going to feel more funeral like not celebr celeb no no no look I think in some ways for Democrats this would become more of a kind of parliamentary election you know where you're arguing the party rather than uh the candidates and that's where the Democrats are going to have to go because if if the judgment is that Trump's going to win then who controls the house how many Democratic senators you can elect becomes a an issue of vital importance and by the way I think that's where a lot of the money will shift I think Democrats are going to get a lot more money who are running for congress and running for the Senate and I think Biden will get a lot less and I think that process has already begun uh but the convention is going to be strange I mean in another in a different way there's no doubt about it you know in 1932 there were two conventions in Chicago one got a lot of attention Franklin Roosevelt was nomin ated in the midst of the Great Depression and it was he was the first president to speak to a convention and he flew from Albany to Chicago to show that he was first of all active enough because people knew that he had had Polio but secondly uh to show that this was a new era the other convention that was held in Chicago that year was the Republican convention and no one remembers it that was Herbert Hoover's convention and right now it feels like that Chicago convention could be more like the Hoover convention than the than the FDR yeah on the other hand if the president makes a decision that he's going to pass the torch there could be a lot of excitement around that convention yeah and the feel of these things has changed these conventions aren't what they used to be it's become fashionable for members of Congress to skip it all together and even here where the mood inside the hall is jubilant and United for trump it is a bit Eerie outside the hall there are a lot of business groups that would have been here in the past that aren't maybe more skeptical to to touch heard uh heard the uh the teamers the Teamsters Union president fle Corporate America I'm that was the strangest thing in the whole night because he was invited there because Trump being transactional as he is wanted to give him the stage because he wants to get at least him neutral keep him neutral or get the teamsters to do what they haven't done in many many years uh and endorse him I don't know have they ever endorsed a republican I don't know did they endorse Reagan not in my lifetime yeah well you're young well yeah time I'm sorry hey I'm only one month younger than JD Vance okay yeah loser what have you done seriously uh so uh but but when he said when he I mean he that was a RI roaring populist dressing down of corporate America uh celebration of organized labor and you could see these delegates kind of looking around saying like what the heck is going on here um so it was sort of in keeping with the new populist spirit that they were trying to but I think they sort of he sort of overshot the runway there for what these people were willing uh to tolerate he said he asked to speak at both conventions I wonder if he'll apparently he is supposed to be speaking at the DNC I don't know if that's going to he did get the line of the night off when he said you know Donald it was the only line that they stood for I think Donald Trump is one you know after what happened this weekend we all know he's he's one tough SOB yeah yeah I just hope he doesn't stand up at the Democratic Convention say Joe Biden's one old son so um David axo thank you for taking time to with us to be with you guys we are as uh not only big fans of David Oxon but huge fans of The Institute of politics at the University of you guys have both contributed so much thanks for being great Partners yes yeah look forward to more thank you so much for listening to the odd years if you liked what you heard or want to make a suggestion leave us a review or recommend us to a friend you're our best way to get the word out about what we do if you want more podcasts from the cook political report consider becoming a subscriber which gives you access to our new podcast the editor Round Table the audior is brought to you by the cook political report and is produced by Becca Koffman thank you and I'll talk to you soon