Mike Murphy’s Biden (retirement) Plan
In today’s episode we unpack what has actually happened in American politics (up and down the ballot) since the presidential debate, we explore Biden’s options (which are not binary), what it tells us about public service in America, and how allies and adversaries abroad might be watching these events unfold.
Mike Murphy has worked on 26 GOP gubernatorial and US Senate races across the country, including 12 wins in Blue States. He was a top strategist for John McCain, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. He’s a political analyst for NBC and MSNBC. He’s co-host of the critically acclaimed "Hacks on Tap" podcast. Mike is also co-director of the University of Southern California’s Center for the Political Future. He’s also the CEO of the EV Politics Project (evpolitics.org).
Find Mike’s podcast, Hacks on Tap, here: https://www.hacksontap.com/
Published pieces we discuss in this episode:
“This Isn’t All Joe Biden’s Fault” by Ezra Klein, THE NEW YORK TIMES: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/30/opinion/biden-debate-convention.html
“Biden Goes Global” by Seth Mandel, COMMENTARY MAGAZINE: https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/biden-panic-goes-global/
“Biden's Presidential Debate Fiasco May Tempt U.S. Foes in the Mideast to Test His Resolve” by Amos Harel, HAARETZ: https://tinyurl.com/3f5kyu5f
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
MM: You know, we're not asking Joe Biden, who I think was, with my ideological arguments aside, a pretty decent president. We're not asking him to make the decision whether or not to melt Nagasaki and Hiroshima and kill a hundred thousand people. We're not asking him whether to wage the civil war. We're asking him at 81, to step aside for what's good for the country and the party in an extremely high stakes election. Yet apparently that is unpalatable. And the Biden operation now is walking around with a big mallet, whacking down Democrats who might say that behind the scenes. And they are operating with Vichy Republican level cowardice.
DS: It's 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, June 30th here in New York City. It is midnight on Monday, July 1st in Israel as Israelis get ready to start their day. We have let Mike Murphy, a fan favorite of the Call Me Back podcast, go on a little bit of a sabbatical while we have been consumed with events in the Middle East. But now events in American politics are coming crashing into events around the world and our audience around the world is trying to understand what is actually happening here. So I called up Mike Murphy longtime Republican strategist who I've worked with on and off for about three decades, and who's been the chief strategist for more successful statewide campaigns Senate governor than I can count and has been a chief strategist for Republican presidential campaigns, and now has a Love hate relationship with the Republican Party in recent years and is the co host of the critically acclaimed ‘Hacks on Tap’ podcast Mike, good to be with you.
MM: Good to be with you. Dan. Good to be back.
DS: It's been a while.
MM: Well stuff's been happening and now we finally had the bomb go off in American politics for a change.
DS: Right. So I want to jump right into that. We've got a lot to cover so I just want to set up where your head was at and you talked a little bit about this on your podcast on ‘Hacks on Tap’ when there was discussion about whether Biden should do this debate then when there was lead up to the actual debate You laid out different scenarios of where Biden could land coming out of that debate So just set up where the Biden campaign was going into the debate where was the presidential race heading into the Thursday night debate and where are we now?
MM: Sure. Well, my view when, when they announced the debate was I was for it because my theory is Biden is narrowly losing the campaign pre-debate. And so this highly unorthodox thing of an incumbent president asking for a national debate before even the nominating convention, uh, was appropriate because I knew it would have two outcomes, possible outcomes. One of two, the one I was hoping for was Biden would be good. Kind of like the state of the union where he exceeded expectations. It would tamp down the building panic over swing state poll numbers within the party. And it would give Trump an opportunity to be worse and it would reset Biden's campaign, which he barely really, really, excuse me, needed. The other outcome, the one I was hoping wouldn't happen, was Biden would be terrible, we'd have a bad Biden night, and then there'd be transparency to the country, and nagging questions like, why didn't the president do the easy Super Bowl interview, a tradition, instead they, they didn't book it. Why did that happen? Oh my God, it's really bad. There's still time to change candidates.
DS: Just for our listeners, especially abroad who may not know what the Super Bowl, so every year the Super Bowl, which is after Thanksgiving, is the most important national ritual in American societal life, American civic life. And, every year at the Superbowl, or right before the Superbowl, the television network that is broadcasting the Superbowl does an interview with the President of the United States, and it's usually not a very tough interview.
MM: Yeah, softball, so to speak.
DS: Right, right. And it's among the highest rating interview a president or any politician is going to get in any year. And it's unheard of for the president to say, no, thanks, but no thanks. I'm not going to do the pre Super Bowl interview. That's what you're referring to. And Biden shocked many of us when he said, thanks, not gonna do it.
MM: Yeah, and I'm sorry, I'm gonna, I'll try to do more global analogies. I didn't know we, we work on Radio Bucharest here. Uh, you've gone global on me, Dan.
DS: Man, we got a big audience in Saudi and Israel and to my Uzbek friends, I say hello. Okay. So anyway. So instead we got the clarity that he's really not up to the job. And we had a disastrous debate. And my prediction was that that would happen. There'd be a massive panic in the democratic party and there'd be open talk of replacing Biden. It was poo pooed a little by my buddy and podcasting partner Axelrod. Because he likes to make the very true and very important point that people can go crazy as much as they want. The only person this late in the process that can stop Joe Biden from being the nominee, except for a tragic medical thing or something, we all pray doesn't happen, is Joe Biden. Joe and Jill, there's no committee of elders, no star chamber, no silver haired Hal Holbrook types, the American actor coming in a seersucker suit and a southern draw to explain what's going on. It's all down to Biden.
DS: And that is because he did this debate before the convention. Which is in next month. But after all the states have voted in the primaries, it means that all the delegates from those states, from those primaries and caucuses that are heading to the convention are committed to Biden. And the only person that can release those delegates and say, you're now free to choose someone else, is Biden. So that's why there's no capacity, at least formally.
MM: Right. Though there's a caveat to it. Under the famous Rule 13 J of the 2020 Democratic Delegate Selection Rules, technically, the delegates are open. The language reads, delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them. So, it's not exactly a pair of handcuffs, but it would be very hard to undo. Practically, Joe Biden has to say, you know what? I'm going to decline the nomination. I'm releasing all delegates. I am no longer a candidate. And then, the fear is, all hell would break loose, and you would have an open convention. And the thousands of Democratic delegates are ideologically pretty liberal. I mean, the AOCs of the world could get into business. Some of the governors have power. Many of the delegates are members of public employee unions. So the head of the teacher's union, SEIU, would be very powerful, AFL. It could be a big democratic mess, which I agree with, though I am pushing a different scenario, which I must say, I think is very, very unlikely because I don't think Joe Biden and particularly Jill Biden are for it. But what I think you could actually do is Biden announces the that the Biden-Harris team, you want to glue yourself to Kamala because moving her as part of the victory equation, the Biden-Harris team is stepping aside. I said, I'd be a bridge to the future. And now's the moment for me to complete that. And I am strongly endorsing, and encouraging all my friends to support governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan for three reasons. She is an excellent governor who will bring energy and my values to the job. She will continue the historic job that Hillary Clinton started because it's about damn time for a woman president. And she will unify the country and defeat Donald Trump. And for vice president smart politics would say an African American, like Senator Warnock of Georgia, who's very charismatic, another key state that team with Biden, Biden can't walk through the curtain and vanish for three or four days hits the road. There would be a media explosion. First female president, a democratic winner, a generational change. What a patriot Biden is stepping aside, putting his own personal ambition aside. What a contrast to Trump. Biden's numbers inside the party, and I think in the country, would skyrocket after four days of campaigning, the polls would start coming back and the ticket of Gretchen Whitmer and Cory Booker, Raphael Warnock, Dan Senor, whoever,
DS: God forbid.
MM: Would be beating Trump by five to seven points. It would be a surge. The Democratic Party would be euphoric. And I think the convention would become a coronation, not a messy, crazy Democrat fight. Now, you know, there would be leaks of unhappy people from other places, but if the bandwagon is as big as I believe it could be, if properly created, it would run right through the convention and Trump would spin out into a panic because he would get beaten like a dead mule. There's risk. Whitmer's done very well in Michigan politics, which is a tough, competitive swing state. Not a safe democratic state. She's very good. But she hasn't been tested in the presidential crucible yet.
DS: None of them have.
MM: Yeah, right. A primary would give you that. But guess what? There's not going to be a primary.
DS: Other names they're talking about. Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar, I think. And I guess Pete Buttigieg are the only ones who are talked about that have been tested. But otherwise, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, Jared Polis, governor of Colorado, like Gavin Newsom. None of these people have been tested.
MM: Right, but the risk of that is much smaller than the risk of Biden continuing.
DS: You're saying this is the model, pick Gretchen Whitmer and a running mate that makes sense? Or are you saying this is the model and you're just using Gretchen Whitmer as an example here?
MM: No, it's the model because in order to grab Kamala, another weak candidate, and say the Biden team is leaving, the identity realities inside the Democratic Party and the Democrat delegate universe requires that if you're going to take away the first black female vice president, you damn well better have an identity pitch that's bigger and more interesting, which is the first female president. So I don't think you can pick a white guy. And you don't have to, Whitmer is a star.
DS: Why on earth would Kamala Harris go along with this?
MM: Because she has no damn choice if you do it right. It's a bandwagon. Really, Kamala, you're going to blow up the world to elect Donald Trump? And by the way, she could become frontrunner in the governor's race for California in 2026 if she's smart.
DS: But if she resents this scenario, and she thinks this is the closest she's had to being president of the United States, the closest shot she's going to have.
MM: Oh yeah, she'll hate it. She'll hate it. She'll vote for Trump.
DS: And she'll argue to all her allies. And all her surrogates that the, you know, the president chose me to be next in line. And apparently vice presidents are next in line to be president, except when they're the first black woman.
MM: Yeah. Is she really going to do that? If there is pandemonium for Whitmer and beating Hillary and first female president, is she's really going to say, you know, who the second most selfish person in this race is after Donald Trump? Me, me, me, it's all about me. You're taking my thing away. Is she going to really tear the democratic party in half and elect Donald Trump?
Is she that juvenile? Is she that? You call her bluff.
DS: Okay, so do you have any other options?
MM: Yeah, there are other options. You know, you can call a Kardashian up, but the strongest one is Whitmer because she's the best Paul. She'll give you Michigan, and that means you've almost won. And she gives you the cause of the first female president to trump Harris with. You've got to have the right political murder weapon on Harris and you need a bandwagon. Now you're making history and you identify it from the beginning as the team. Now, by the way, they're not going to do it. They've made it very clear in the last 24 hours, they're out crushing dissent. They're taking the party hostage now. That's pretty scary if you don't want Donald Trump to be president, but Biden is making the selfish choice here, which really breaks my heart as somebody who was going to vote for Biden, even now. But boy, he's lost his raison d'etre to be president of the United States now. He's looking every bit as selfish as Trump.
DS: Just as it relates to the debate, you have done debate prep for tens of hundreds, I don't even know how many candidates. You've done a lot of debate prep in your life, in your career. You have negotiated terms for debates, including format and all these related issues for numerous debates. In retrospect, Were the terms they agreed to for this debate actually harmful to Biden? Because they went into it arguing, oh, it's great. No studio audience. Trump plays to a studio audience. Oh, it's great. They'll mute Trump and Trump can't be so disruptive. But in retrospect, it may be actually the audience may have helped Biden because, because he would have reacted. It generated more energy from the crowd. B, Trump popping off and interrupting may have actually helped too.
MM: No, no, I get it. Way to get it. Look, in retrospect, the biggest flaw of the debate was there was a camera there. You know, you can work backwards from that. If there was an audience, Biden could have, if it was one of those town hall debates, Biden could have emoted, maybe.
DS: Right.
MM: The problem was Biden.
DS: Yeah.
MM: So my theory on the debate was they're going to reset the race because they think they can, you know, have the Biden from the state of the union and they got to do something. So it's a little risky, but do it. And the idea that Trump can't shout them down the whole time with the microphone control and that they're both naked on a rock and Trump can't do the cheering demagogue stuff. I thought that would be good for Biden, assuming Biden could debate. I have a theory. The huge question is why the hell did the Biden campaign ask for this debate? They had to know what they have there. They had to know Biden's condition. My theory is Biden wanted the debate and none of the staff said, no, Biden and Jill, we're going to go out there and show them he's ready. He's tired of not getting the message out because he was totally unscripted. He barely made sense. It was a combat. He got a little better in the end. He got a line or two off. But But fundamentally he was awful from second one, and that cannot be, have been a surprise to the debate team who are not amateurs over there. My theory is, was totally Biden driven and the staff couldn't or wouldn't stop him.
DS: Okay, so now I want to say, obviously we haven't seen a lot of polling yet, we will, the CBS poll is now out, that says something like 72%?
MM: Yeah, it's 3:1 think he's mentally not up to it. And they think it's 50/50 on Trump, by the way.
DS: Right.
MM: It's not like he's, you know, Metternich here either.
DS: No, he's below 50%. 49 percent for Trump.
MM: Yeah, yeah. Margin of error.
DS: But 72 percent doesn't think he has
MM: I tweeted that finally, in our long, proud American history, we've reached the point where there's a majority behind the idea that crazy times demand a crazy president. We finally got there. USA number one.
DS: So, so 72 percent think he does not have the mental acuity, which is just an amazing thing to ponder. The Biden campaign has issued this fundraising email that a few people have sent to me that shows, these are Biden donors sent it to me. It shows, it lists all the potential matchups of other candidates with Biden, Whitmer, Shapiro, you know, Harris.
MM: They're in a primary now with their own people.
DS: Right. And it's the most pathetic, there's two things that are pathetic about it is Biden's campaign is trying to show, don't worry, those people will be doing badly too. And oh, by the way, their numbers are not that much worse than Biden's up against Trump.
MM: It's crazy. They put out a spin memo from the campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, I think two days ago. The message was basically of, ignore the Washington pearl clutchers and You know, so called smart crowd. We know what we're doing. We're doing the hard work. Our field team has never been happier. We're winning in the East. You know, it was unbelievable. The Biden people have a problem, including the president, with bullshitting everybody. The president likes to go out and tell Americans we have the best economy ever. And you can make a statistical case for it, but out in voter land, they were feeling inflation. They don't believe it. They believe Donald Trump is better at running the economy than Biden by 15 points. And the president likes to go out and tell them they're wrong. Not really how to move the units, as we say in the car business. Now they're putting out spin memos saying, Oh, just one bad night. Do we all think this is going to be the only bad night Biden has going forward? Well, maybe not, so prove it. Sit him down for some interviews, let him go out and perform more than eight minutes on a prompter in front of a partisan crowd, and if he does it, he'll have a great comeback. If he doesn't, then we're going to be back in this soup in another week or ten days. The other thing that'll happen is, we're in the middle of, the debate snap polls, careful. You got to let it cook a while. You got to let all the digital content and the YouTube and TikTok stuff and all that float and burn into people who didn't sit through the whole deal. And the water cooler conversation. The debate performance sparked two debates, not one. I mean, discussions now post debate. One is all the political hacks in the Democratic side saying, Holy crap, my God, I'm not going to show up at that John Tester fundraiser tomorrow. I'm not going to look him in the eye. He's going to get wiped out. All the down bell people, you already have tough races, very tougher going nuts that the party types are going nuts. But meanwhile, the kind of Mount Olympus crowd. It's starting to openly question whether Biden can do the job. You got the Tom Freedman's and you know, yada, yada, yada. So there's a fairly legitimate debate going on about that. So the Biden people have to answer that question with performance, or, remember of the polls are a rear view mirror. So give it a week and then we'll see where we really are. And because the electorate is so polarized, don't expect to see some 10 point swing. But my guess is Biden will be down outside the margin of error in all five or six swing states. And then we're going to have the panic again. So there will be a lot of panic till Biden puts the panic out. And the big million dollar question is, is he capable of doing it? Does he have the toolbox or are we going to have more transparency and more bad night Joes and does the situation compound? So, you know, the first weekend here, they're not out of the woods. They're two trees in, unless Biden can get on television interviews and perform.
DS: One bad night. So Obama issued, put out that tweet saying I had a bad night. I remember that debate. I was involved with that debate in that campaign, which is the Romney/Obama, that first debate in 2012. Obama did have a bad debate, but no one came out of that debate thinking Obama was unfit to be president.
MM: No, it's very different. And he's Obama. He's allowed to trip, you know, he'll get up and perform. He's a performer. With Biden, the Repubs have said for a year, he's old and senile. And he went out and he acted old and senile. So now what?
DS: Right.
MM: You know, he's got to put toothpaste back in the tube. Not easy. We'll see. If he can, he's back in business, but I am low and I don't work with Joe Biden every day. I don't know, but based on what I saw in the way they were acting before the debate, which in hindsight looks so crazy because they had to know, I don't know if Biden has great days. And it's like the old Saturday night live sketch of Reagan barking orders and rushing into the phone and everybody running around the famous ‘Mastermind Sketch’, kids you can Google it. Or most Biden times are bad. Then, I don't know how they performed through the campaign with this hanging over their head, because now the burden is on him to disprove it.
DS: Reagan in ‘84. Reagan in ‘84 had a bad few minutes of a debate, and then he ended up having this extraordinary victory in that debate, and that bad few minutes of the debate, he did look sort of lost, and, you know, the debate with Mondale. And the press went kind of crazy, not exactly like this, but the press did got go kind of crazy. Do you think it's similar to the Obama in 2012?
MM: No, because this thing is based on a fact. He's really old. Looks old, talks old, acts old. And now there he was naked on a rock being really old. I mean, Trump had a terrible debate.
DS: But Reagan in 84, there, there was this concern that Reagan was old.
MM: Right. Right. But it wasn't, it's not a tick tock universe. Then the message doesn't go everywhere. You can do it in set pieces. Like Reagan gets the one line off.
DS: Right.
MM: It's much more diffuse. Now you don't have the control used to have the communications channel. So no, I don't think they just shake this thing off. And if, by the way, it's not like, wow, his eight point lead may be in danger.
DS: Right.
MM: You know, it might tighten. He was losing before the debate, albeit narrowly, but he was losing three of the swing states. He was in pretty bad shape in Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia, where it's sunny. I like to call them the soda states compared to the pop states, where people say pop, not soda, in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Biden was in the hunt, maybe a point ahead. That's what I'm going to be watching. I'll tell you one thing, 10 days before the debate, I took a look at a private poll done actually by one of Biden's polling firms, quite good, very accomplished democratic firm in LA County, not just the city of Los Angeles, the entire county, 10 million people. It's as big as Michigan or Ohio. And Biden's going to carry that county. It's three to one democratic. It's one third Hispanic, but Joe Biden's favorable unfavorable rating in LA County democratic stronghold was 52 positive, 46 negative.
DS: Wow.
MM: Terrible numbers. Now, they hate Trump. Trump's not going to win the county, but you can kind of see the rot within the Democratic Party as far as very limited enthusiasm or affection for Biden in a super Democratic county. Now, among Democrats, the numbers are better. Among Hispanic men, they were terrible. They were not all Democrats. So anyway, the point is, he was in trouble before this debate. There was no cushion. This was, he did this debate to gain, to reset the race, and instead, you know, it was like scanners, and he blew his head up. So now, we're gonna see what happens, but it's clear the Biden campaign, or Jill Biden, who I think is a huge voice in all this, has decided to crush the opposition full speed ahead. So, we'll see if they're saying that in a week when the polls get worse.
DS: You mentioned the down ballot races. I want to spend a moment on that. Our friend Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania already has an ad that he just posted tonight, digital ad, where he literally just took clips from the debate and then intermix them with clips of Bob Casey, the incumbent democratic Senator in Pennsylvania, who he's running against. Providing testimonials for how fit Biden is to be president and contrasting clips of Casey with Biden's disastrous performance and all these pundits and people in the news saying Biden had a disastrous performance and making Casey kind of own Biden's mess. That's going to be a competitive down ballot senate race. There are numerous other races that could determine the majority certainly in the house. How big of a problem is this for down ballot democrats?
MM: Well, it's a big problem It's less the mccormick's of the world doing the what sounds like a slightly clever-by-half spot. It’s that, if Joe Biden doesn't carry Pennsylvania and there's a repudiation at Joe Biden, that's very good for McCormick presidential rates at the top of the ticket has an impact. And in a competitive Senate race, it could really make a difference. Now, the other thing is you have democratic senators who are very adroit politicians, but they're playing big away games this year. Sherwood Brown in Ohio. Now he's got a crank opponent, but you know, Biden's going to lose Ohio and he's going to lose it by more after this debate, unless there's a course correction or Trump does something crazy, which of course you can't count out. You got folks like Tester in Montana, who's probably already a point or two behind. The Republicans finally nominated their candidate. The party got the veteran kind of presentable candidate they wanted. So that's going to be a tough race for Tester. And it's just gotten a lot tougher. I've seen statewide polling in Montana where, you know, Biden's numbers, I mean, he's never going to carry the state, but he's not where he ought to be for the down ballot people in a war of survival like Tester. And you can kind of go down the list of the tough races. Nevada's another one. Democratic incumbent in the state, Trump may well carry and carry by more.
DS: So the issue here, I guess what I'm pointing to is, I take your point that this could lead to Biden's underperformance, but I also think, as Republicans have had to experience over the years, down ballot candidates, so candidates running for the House, Senate, Governor, having to answer from the press for everything Trump related creates a massive distraction, has created a big distraction for Republicans.
MM: Yeah, do you go to the Biden rallies? Do you endorse him? Do you think he can do the job? It's just all of a sudden you're on a bed of nails. Yeah.
DS: Exactly. That's what I mean. So now suddenly every Democrat is going to have to be constantly answering for what do you have confidence in Biden to do this? Do you have confidence in Biden to do that? Do you think Biden should, you know, it's like an endless, so it's just a distraction.
MM: That's why it's down to Biden. He's got to sit down and do the 60 minutes interview and talk about, look, it's not my style to trade insults with a toddler. Wasn't my greatest night, but, and be able to do those interviews. And if he can't. Then here we are again. Right.
DS: Mike, the first couple of days, basically the weekend, we had a lot of Democrats, seemingly professional Democrats or donors, on background saying what you're saying. A version of what you're saying. But they're all doing it on background. We still have not had a major elected, prominent, national Democrat come out and say what everyone's saying quietly, to say it on the record. And I want to quote here from Ezra Klein, who's got a piece up. I think it's called, ‘It's not all Biden's Fault’ in the New York times. I'm just going to quote here. He says, “even if top Democrats believe Biden should be replaced, they face a collective action problem. Imagine you're Newsom (Gavin Newsom, the governor of California). Imagine you're Newsom. You want to run in 2028. If Biden drops out, you want to be considered in 2024. Is the best strategy for you to try to push Biden out of the race publicly, or is it to be the most loyal of loyal soldiers so that if Biden leaves or loses, you have a strong bond with his donors, his team, and his supporters? And who wants to be the member of Biden's inner circle who goes to him and says, you're not up to this anymore? What happens to your role in the White House the day after? It doesn't serve any individual Democrat's interest to oppose Biden.”
MM: Oh, I completely agree. In fact, there is a dark depressing irony to this, because during the Trump era, Democrats, particularly Democrats elected, we're all very smug about this. Oh, you Republicans, you put up with Donald Trump. You don't have the courage to call them out. You know, you're not patriots. You're gutless. We're patriots. We're calling them out. Well, the easiest thing in the world to do in democratic politics is trash Trump. I've got friends who voted for impeachment in the house and they're not there anymore. They blew up their careers by being public and taking the hard vote. Big hat tip to Bill Casey, who's got a tough re-elect now in Louisiana, because he did the right thing, the Senator.
DS: Bill Cassidy.
MM: So now all these smug Democrats, where are they? Well, they're putting their careers over what's right for the country. Because that's what people do in Washington. Careerism is the high lantern here, not patriotism anymore. And they're getting a taste of their own medicine, and I wonder how it tastes. They ought to be saying something. You know, we're not asking Joe Biden, who I think was, with my ideological arguments aside, a pretty decent president. We're not asking him to make the decision whether or not to melt Nagasaki and Hiroshima and kill 100,000 people. We're not asking him whether to wage the civil war. We're asking him at 81, To step aside for what's good for the country and the party in an extremely high stakes election. Yet apparently that is unpalatable, and the biden operation now is walking around with a big mallet whacking down democrats who might say that behind the scenes And they are operating with Vichy-Republican level cowardice.
DS: Okay.
MM: There you go I'm going to have a fun day tomorrow here in Washington, don't you think?
DS: Yeah, Mike, I should say is in Washington and is going to a series of meetings where I think you could easily get those meetings will suddenly be canceled.
MM: Well, only if the Biden and the Democrat friends of mine all listen to Radio Bulgaria. I think I have 48 hours on this worldwide global shortwave podcast here.
DS: Under your scenario of opening it up, quote unquote, opening it up, but Biden really saying my administration is
MM: No, you got to rig it. Let me be clear. Open means anarchy. You steamroll it with a winner. DS: Right. So you rig it, and you say, we're getting behind someone else. What could go wrong with that scenario?
MM: On day two, Gretchen screws up and tells the joke about the rabbi, the duck, and the pope. It turns out she killed her brother in 8th grade, and they covered it up. You know, I mean, she can't take the velocity. That would screw it up. Kamala Harris deciding to put a grenade in her mouth and elect Donald Trump could screw it up, but I think you can bluff her out of it. She's young, she's somebody, she's not dumb, and she's got an excellent shot to be governor of California, I believe, if she did this, which is not a bad thing to try again with. So, there's risk in it, but after that debate, I think it's less risky than more Joe Biden.
DS: And then why not go the open route? So just for our listeners to understand, this would mean an open convention. So instead of doing what Mike is saying here, instead of saying, I'm not running and I'm releasing my delegates and I'm getting behind Gretchen Whitmer, it would be, I'm not running, I'm releasing my delegates and
MM: Have fun.
DS: Right, let a thousand flowers bloom. And then you'd see six, seven, eight candidates.
MM: Right, though Carville has the smartest version of this scenario, which is the DNC picks like five. It's a multiple choice, not an essay test.
DS: Okay.
MM: So you don't have the AOCs and the wackadoodles. And then it's going to be Pritzker and Newsom. And God, I don't know of the tungsten wall that could stop Klobuchar from trying. Maybe Paul is, I mean, you've got about nine
DS: Right.
MM: players, so I don't know how you fit them into a five candidate sack, but keep in mind the, the Democratic National Committee, which has far more members than the RNC and the Democratic delegate world is larger. They've also kind of defanged their super delegates a bit. They are the grandchildren of the 1972/4 democratic convention reforms that really democratize the democratic party. So there's a lot of identity involved. There's a lot of public employee labor involved. There's a lot of liberal activists. Bernie Sanders will be a power player.
DS:You mean the delegates who show up at the convention?
MM: Yeah, the delegates. This is an election if you totally open it up.
DS: Right. And it's a few thousand people. You're just talking about a few thousand people.
MM: Yeah.
DS: Who represent some of the most progressive causes and organizations in American politics.
MM: Yeah, it's the Democrats are a corporatist party in the political science sense, like the old PRI in Mexico. They're a web of interest groups. So the interest groups would get together. There'd be blocks of interest groups. Some governors would have their bodies there. The teachers union would have a lot of bodies. They would be very powerful in this. And there's an ideological factor. So it would not be pretty from the outside. That's why I think you got to bum-rush it. Because otherwise you're going to see democracy with hyperventilating network commentators screaming, AOC is walking her 104 delegates off the floor. You know, Robert Kennedy Jr. is in a hotel room across the street for secret meeting. God knows, the way the media covers things now, the Democrats would look like they can't organize a two car funeral. And meanwhile, Trump is doing his neo fascist stuff. I'm order.
DS: Right.
MM: You know, they're anarchy. And not good.
DS: All right. So I want to broaden here the perspective and bring in how the world is looking at this. Seth Mandel and commentary on the commentary magazine homepage had website had a blog up the next day, basically looking at how the world was looking at this debate. I'm just reading from here. He writes “the homepage of the UK Telegraph this morning was filled to the brim with headlines like quote, ‘Biden under pressure to quit after painful debate performance. Biden is a danger to the free world. The free world must have a new leader.’” And then he goes on to say, “The Russian press was having so much fun with this debate debacle, was leading the Russian press. Australia's Sydney Morning Herald headline, Democrats have other options after Biden disaster. The South China Morning Post uses the following quote as its headline. ‘Biden might have imploded’” and then it goes on the UAE press the Canadian press the on and on and on and on and on. Here's one from the Toronto Star in Canada puts it colorfully He writes the headline is “Joe Biden reportedly had a cold, after watching him perform, the whole world is feeling sick.” Okay, so Mike How big a problem is that? That is actually what I'm most worried about. A lot of bad things are happening in the world right now. The U.S. has high stakes in two major wars. One in Europe, one in the Middle East.
MM: Yeah.
DS: We could blink and there could be another one, you know, between China and Taiwan. And you look at the press coverage just openly mocking the commander in chief of the most powerful military in the world.
MM: Yeah, it's not good. I kind of break it into regions, the brits, you know they're about to blow up their prime minister and crush the tory. So they're
DS: On July 4th.
MM: Although rejecting Sunak there will be parallels with Biden voters tired of incumbents, you know that'll be yet another bad narrative there have to deal with. I think the chinese are probably sitting down in an emergency politburo meeting saying alright, the big dog is turning inward, it's chasing its own tail. That's an opportunity for us to make a few incremental moves, but some smart Chinese communist politburo leader is going to say, hey, wait a minute, everybody. It can't be this bad, right? This is like some American trick. You know, we got two clowns arguing about golf in their eighties. Now what's really going, you know, I'm sure they're a little puzzled because foreign countries and systems have trouble understanding our system.
DS: It's like a psyops thing.
MM: They tend to project their stuff on us. So the Chinese, I'm sure, are going berserk trying to figure this out. The Russians probably are turning on the bots again, because going back to, you know, the common turn, the Russians have had a strategy of fermenting dissent and trouble in democracies, which they see as a vulnerable system. So God knows what we're in for on crazy Biden memes. Thank you, Kremlin on the social media platforms. And what I worry most about is Hezbollah cranks it up thinking we're distracted. The Israelis are stretched. They are isolated in the world. After Gaza, Bibi is unpopular and polarizing. So, hey, why don't we turn up the heat a little bit here? And you know, that could be a major foreign policy crisis that could start any minute. And as you said, the Taiwan Strait and the Chinese, though, they tend to be cautious in times of crisis. So yes, when nobody's watching the big American story, I was in Europe at a speech, Erskine Bowles and I did it in London to a small group of very wealthy family business people, all multi billionaires in Europe. And one of them made a good point, which is, you know, the U.S. is the metronome of the world orchestra, particularly the democracies, tick tock. When there's no metronome, the whole orchestra goes to hell. And the Germans start thinking about how, do they stand alone with the domestic politics that doesn't like military spending? Do we need a German bomb as insurance? You know, all kinds of bad things start happening. And by the way, we've got a French election that seems to be going sideways today. So yeah, it's very worrying. It's not a time for the U. S. to be running in circles debating whether you want the evil antichrist or the guy who's looking at applesauce all day long. Not good.
DS: So just staying on that, Amos Harel, who's a Israeli columnist we've had on this podcast a bunch of times, he's like one of the most senior military national security columnist analysts in Israel for Haaretz, and he has a piece up basically saying, the real big risk as it relates to US foreign policy and the way Israelis are going to Israeli leaders are going to think about it is, we've really had Washington's attention. We Israel, have really had Washington's attention since October 7th. Now Washington is going to be consumed with something else. It's going to consume the Congress It's going to consume the White House. Now, obviously the US government is big and can function even when it's political leaders in the most senior roles are distracted. But still, this one could be pretty all consuming. And that's worrisome, A. B, if you're sitting in one of the Gulf Arab countries and you're being pressured by this administration to do some kind of deal with Israel for the day after the war in Gaza some kind of normalization with Israel. If you're the Saudis, you're sitting there thinking, who are we negotiating here with? We're negotiating with the U.S. government? This president looks weak. They're distracted.
MM: Or Trump.
DS: Right. Or should we just wait?
MM: Yeah, who do we negotiate with? Well, and I think Bibi may make a dumb bet in the long term, which is, I'll just play to the Trump thing and meddle in the U.S. elections because I think he's gonna win. The Democrats will take that as seeing Israel more from an ally to a political problem. Which means If the Democrats win the House, which they can still do, or Biden has a miracle come back, or they do the switch to somebody who will beat Trump, because Trump is not strong, it's a real problem for the Israelis because becoming partisan and isolating themselves from the U.S. is geopolitical suicide in the medium to long term, I think. So there's a real risk that people start being too clever by half, and I agree with the risk that other things will take over.
DS: Okay, Mike, so let's end with this. What is your prediction? Like, what do you think is going to happen here?
MM: Boy, I, in the short term, the consensus is Biden's decided to keep it. They're turning out the apparat, and it is a true fact that if the president wants to keep this nomination, he can do it. But I don't think they're going to be lighting cupcakes, candles in the White House on Tuesday. Wow, we handled that because they're in for a wave of troubling polling coming next. And if the next Biden media appearances, they can't hide them though they tend to, aren't good, they're going to go through it all again. And then it'll be, well, we're not done. It's not one bad night. It's one bad candidate. Every night's a bad night and something must be done and be refighting this whole war again in a week.
DS: Okay, so it's bad, but the problem is, based on what I'm listening to you, is Biden is going to hang on.
MM: Well, that's the signal they're sending, especially Jill, who's very influential. You know, I heard a smart Democrat say, you know, well, that's interesting, but that's the miracle. And I'm like, well, I've never had the power in my life, and I don't think many people have to actually create a miracle. Biden has the power. This miracle can come true with one presidential decision. It's just every tell we have right now is that Biden's not doing it. But I don't think the litigation has ended. I think this is a two to three week long deal here. And they may declare it over, but I don't think it's over.
DS: What's the latest they could make this decision?
MM: Boy, I've heard different scenarios and I haven't done the research myself.
DS: But, like, early August. I mean, it's got to be before the convention.
MM: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we're probably in a full July window here.
DS: Okay. Alright. Mike, thank you for this. I wish you survival in your meetings with the power brokers in D.C. and all those smoke filled rooms you're being invited to.
MM: I'm on my way to New Hampshire for a vacation. Just seeing a few old friends here.
DS: Alright, but before you go, just quickly, Hacks on Tap is your primary focus, and then tell us about your EV project. Oh, thank you for the plug. Yeah, I'm a Detroit boy, and I really don't want the Chinese to have 90 percent of world auto manufacturing in 15 years. They've already gone to 25 percent in Latin America. So I did a bunch of polling, and I've been meeting with auto CEOs, telling them how to get over the hearts and minds tribal problem Republicans have with EVs. You can see a lot of the polling, some fun Elon stuff, and everything we do. Just go to our website. We have two URLs that go to the same one, evpolitics.org and evrepublicans.org. And check it out. We have a lot of great content there.
DS: And Mike, I will say you were the first guest of the Call Me Back podcast who has ever cited Section 13J of the 2020 Democratic platform and been able to, like, recite it. That was very impressive.
MM: Well, it's a parlor trick because it was sent to me by my friend, Jeff Forbes, used to be political director of the DNC in a text. And, uh, there's a lot of technical discussion going on among the hack world about all this. And again, I'll plug, if you're not a hacks on tap listener, We did a before and after the debate podcast with me, Axelrod and David Plouffe, who ran Obama's thing. The after one went up Friday. It's quick and worth a listen, I think, because they both have real insight into this, having been there and being in the middle of democratic politics at this moment.
DS: We will post it in the show notes. Mike, thanks for doing this.
MM: Thank you, pal. I always call Dan Senor back.
DS: Talk to you later.
MM: I'll see ya.
DS: That's our show for today. To keep up with Mike Murphy, you can follow him on X, @murphymike, and you can also follow EVPoliticsUSA, which is the EV political project he was referencing there at the end of the conversation. And of course, be sure to subscribe and listen to Hacks on Tap, the podcast that he co hosts with David Axelrod. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.