S4 Ep5: They’d Rather Eat a Bowl of Glass (with Amy Walter)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I’m Sarah Long well, publisher of the Bulwark. And today, we’re talking about swing voters. Those elusive voters that aren’t definitively locked into either party and evaluate candidates a bit differently than their more tribal brethren. But I’m gonna need you to buckle up because these swing voters are not happy with Joe Biden.

And some of them are considering swinging back to Donald Trump or are tempted by third party options. A lot of these Trump to Biden voters are what’s being called the double doubters or the double haters, if you wanna be meaner. The people who dislike both candidates. According to Democratic pollster, Doug Sosnick, in twenty sixteen, Donald Trump won these voters by seventeen points, and in twenty twenty, Joe Biden won them by fifteen points. My guest today is the great Amy Walter, editor in chief of the Cook political report with Amy Walter.

And she was the first guest. The o g guest when this podcast launched. She’s the only person who has been here four times. She is my friend in a focus group hall of famer. Amy, thanks for being here.

Thank you. And for that, I get a jacket. Right? That’s right. Four time club.

Or vest. Yep. Really a vest.

Anyone who’s not watching on YouTube, I am vested up for the fall.

We can never go wrong with this. No. No.

Alright. So so okay.

So here’s these were some good groups, sir.

These were some good groups. This is gonna be a good one. I’ve been excited for this one. My team knows.

Me too.

Couldn’t wait to have you on to do this. I will just do a just a quick promotion for yourself. I came on your podcast not too long ago. The odd years. Yes.

You did. Thank you.

We had a great talk. Tell me from in terms of the thread for your podcast, what’s been going on, what should people know, because people should listen to your podcast.

Well, thank you. Yes. You can find the odd years on all of the various platforms where one finds Secret Podcast, And we called it the odd years because as you know, it is an odd numbered year when we aren’t in the middle of election season, but things are still happening that fine in many cases the next election. So we’ve been talking to a lot of good smart people like you about things to look for in twenty twenty four. We just spoke with Mark Barrback, a columnist for the LA Times who spent the last I think it’s been three or four months out west helping us to understand how states like Colorado and New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, which were once, if not Republican strongholds, at least more toss-up y, purply, like Arizona is purply, but how they turned more democratic.

And then as we get into the on year for our subscribers, we will be talking with the editors of the Cook political report about specific races and really dig deep into the stuff that you and your listeners, I know care a lot about, which is the candidates, the races, the places to watch.

And the voters.

The voters. Hey.

So wait. Just quick clarification because I’ve been wondering this. You called it the odd years. Makes sense this year.

Mhmm.

And next year, it’s called the on years.

It’s still the odd years, but with the branding, it’s everybody’s on.

I see. We’ll work. That works. Understand. Okay.

Let’s jump right into the scary stuff. And to be clear, I’m not saying you’re saying it’s scary. I’m just gonna say, I think it’s scary because I am They never trump her through and through. So for me, I’m thinking about these swing voters from a persuasion standpoint. Like, these are people that need to be part of the anti trump coalition, in order to ensure that Donald Trump doesn’t become president again, should he be the nominee, which it looks like he will be?

So for months, we’ve been talking to people who voted Trump in twenty sixteen and Biden in twenty twenty, we often call them flippers on this podcast, our term of art, and some of them are backsliding towards Trump. Let’s listen.

Trump was a nut. However, he didn’t leave the country in the shape that Joe Biden is leaving us at. And for that, he’s fired.

Alma said that I’m glad that to Biden still running only to give the republic in a better chance because I think it’ll fail miserably.

I’m not gonna choose by He’s incompetent. So I’d have to choose somebody to run the country. And that choice would have to be Trump.

I also have retirement accounts that just make me gasp when I open them up to see their results. And we we really need to get something better going as far as the economy is concerned.

You’re gonna have to pick between the two eagles, and I’m going to Republic at this time around because this country needs to turn around and I’ll put up with the bullcrap and just turn off CNN and Fox for the next four years after that.

Wolf. Okay. So does this sound about right to you in terms of your work and what you’ve been seeing maybe in other groups that you’ve watched it comes to the backsliding swing voters?

Yeah. I mean, here’s what my takeaway was, Sarah, every single one of those voters felt very disappointed in the Biden administration. Now some of them gave him as high of a grade as like a c but mostly they were grading him very, very poorly.

Right. Like, the c was the highest he got.

The c was the high. I think maybe someone gave him a b. But that was about as high as you’re gonna get. But what was really clear was these voters, especially in the earlier group, the September group were still very anti trump. I think one person, I wrote down one person said, you know, I regret voting for Biden, but I don’t regret voting against Donald Trump.

And so I didn’t sense them as really willing to go back to Trump as much as they were really looking for an off ramp that would allow them to vote for a Republican they liked. They loved the idea of being of the vote for Tim Scott or Nikki Haley. Love it. They didn’t even question who they would vote for if it were Tim Scott versus Joe Biden. And they sure liked the concept of, oh, a third party candidate a no label’s candidate, Joe Manchin.

Sure. Yeah. But I think they also really appreciate the stakes involved. When it comes to Donald Trump. And so that to me is the real key element here is the Biden campaign is not gonna win these people over by telling them, you know, what?

Things aren’t that bad. You know what? It’s been a pretty good two years. Bidenomics is working great. It is just a constant reminder of the chaos and the the threat that a a Trump second term would be.

So there is no doubt that your analysis right there is correct. And I will tell you, we went and pulled the numbers of all the swing voters we talked to. And, again, as I always remind people on the show, focus groups, they’re not polls, but

Not polls.

But I can tell you that when we push people into the head to head choice, even the ones who were super down on Biden Exactly. Between Trump and Biden head to head, there was thirty eight for Biden, five for Trump. And then we also had another sort of subgroup that we’ve talked to in these swing voters, which is there were people who voted for Trump in sixteen and then Biden in twenty twenty but they vote in Republican primaries. So these are your sort of even more Republican voters. And that split was thirteen for Biden and eight.

For Trump. And so Biden’s still he’s winning them, but, like, here’s my question to you. Can he afford any backsliding at all?

I knew it. That’s that really is the question. Right? And I know you’re the voters you picked, all are coming from swing state. So that’s crucial too.

Can he afford to have some slide in Illinois? Sure. That’s not a problem, but not in Wisconsin, not in Arizona. The Biden campaign, they seem very convinced that these voters come back because by the time we hit this point next year, Donald Trump will be, once again, the focus of all of our attention. We may have decisions made by courts and juries by then.

And, I mean, to me, the thing that really strikes me is this feels very much like twenty sixteen. Remember when anytime we were talking about Hillary Clinton, Trump’s numbers got better, And anytime we were talking about Donald Trump, hillary clinton’s numbers got better, it’s not that people suddenly liked one of the candidates more you know, from one week to the next. It was that when they didn’t see the person that really made them insane, wasn’t capturing their attention at that moment. It gave them the opportunity to detach from their feelings of anger, frustration, or whatever with that person. But there is no doubt, Sarah.

This is a big risk that Democrats are taking. It is basically all coming down to this. It has to be Donald Trump. As the nominee for Joe Biden to win, number one, and number two, even with that. They have got to get people who voted for Biden Again, most of them voted for Biden because they didn’t like Trump in the first place.

These were never pro Biden voters. But boy, did they think they were gonna get something different than what they have right now? Mostly what I was really struck by were the number of voters who said things like, I thought we were gonna get more change. I thought things were gonna get better. Right?

Wasn’t that the whole promise and premise of the Biden campaign was we’ve had crazy for four years, elect me, I’m gonna be boring, and I’m not gonna be particularly inventive or new, but I’m gonna bring stability. And we’re not gonna have all this partisan fighting, and we’re not gonna have all of the anger and vitriol. And these voters were like, well, where’s that?

Yeah. Well, and I gotta say, I think if you drill down further on why some of these voters kind of start to sound like they’re pining for the halcyon days of Donald Trump, The main reason to me is I hear is the economy. Like, in terms of what they don’t think is better, like, they are frustrated by the state of the economy. And even if, like, they don’t wanna vote for Trump, like, there’s this pull I can feel in them where they talk about the economy, they think Trump was just better at this. Let’s listen.

I don’t know if they wanna call it a recession. I know they don’t want to, but our economy is just in the dumpster right now and they’re lighting the fire. And I’m a registered republican. So for me to vote for Biden was off the rails for me. And I just wanted somebody different, but it’s turned into the very leaning towards socialism of handing out money.

Somebody mentioned it earlier, like hand over fist and it’s just going crazy. And That’s where our economy is in the dumpster right now.

I think we’re reaping what we saw. What do we think was gonna happen when we started giving out money like a drunken sailor? And what do you think is gonna happen if Biden’s still doing the same thing?

And if you look at home values, generational wealth, personal wealth, it hit record highs between two thousand sixteen through two thousand and twenty.

I was expecting a lot more, you know, promises, campaign wise, you know, debt relief, mortgage rates, interest rates, and haven’t seen much changing economy wise. From the time we pulled out of Afghanistan. Biden’s been on a downhill spiral as has his administration, whether it’s a border crisis and tech us in Arizona or the wars that we’re involved with, and now we’re in Ukraine.

I don’t think Putin would have even tried something with Trump to be perfectly honest because Trump was not predictable to Putin. So I tend to think that a lot of the stuff that we’re in now, inflation, the rising interest rates, it just would have been handled a lot differently, at at least decisively. So I’m looking for more decisive leadership moving forward versus kind of the milk toast that we’ve got now.

So, yeah. So, you know, the economy across the board guys, just up in Pennsylvania, with your pal Judy Woodruff. We were talking to people in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and, like, she’s my pal too, but we were

Oh, shit.

Listening to Democratic voters and, like, younger voters, and it’s about rent. I mean, everybody talks about grocery store. Everybody talks about gas. And so, like, I feel like they have this problem where it’s like economy good on paper. You know, like, they can talk about the macro economy turning around, but Obama faced this in twenty twelve.

And you you were a close political observer back then, and I was still, like, a Republican hacks. So, like, maybe you can tell me strategy wise, like, what does Biden have to do in the face of a tough economy to get people to sort of stick with him?

Yeah. These are really good points that you’re bringing up. And we see it in the empirical data too, where you ask voters, not just do you think the economy was better with Trump, which most voters agree with, but then you say, well, who do you think will do a better job on the economy? And trumps ahead on that question anywhere from ten to fifteen points. Now the interesting thing too, Sarah, if you just these are the x polls, so take them with the grain of salt that comes with exit polls.

But even back in twenty twenty, voters overall gave Trump higher ratings on the economy than they did Biden. So they saw him as better able to handle the economy than Biden by six points. So this has been a challenge too for Trump, which is he’s been unable to translate that level of trust in his ability to handle the economy into votes. Now that’s also when Trump was president though, and he’s not anymore. And the person who is is going to have to take the responsibility for the state of the economy.

That’s just the reality. So it’s now Biden’s economy, and it is clear that voters are very unhappy with it. And I think the difference between something like inflation and say other challenges, like unemployment or coming out of the financial crisis and the worries about, you know, depleted four zero one Ks and things like that. Is that inflation is with you every single day. And you’re right.

I hear the same thing in other focus groups. The number one thing people talk about when they talk about the economy is the cost of groceries. And the voters in this focus group were saying the same thing. So in twenty twelve, what the Obama campaign recognized was that they couldn’t tell people that they should feel better because they’re a message of things could have been a lot worse. You know, this could have been the Great Depression.

Isn’t exactly a winning message. Vote for us, things could have been worse. So they had to define the race as not so much about how good is the economy, but who’s looking out for you. And Barack Obama is Mitt Romney’s just looking out for his himself and his rich friends. And you can see the Biden campaign doing that right now.

If you watch some of the ads that they’re starting to run-in these swing states. It’s we took on the pharmaceutical industry something nobody else did. You know, trump didn’t take on pharma. We did. We lowered health care costs for seniors.

We got the cap on insulin costs. Were out here fighting for labor unions. Trump tried to undermine them. So you can see that’s where they’re trying to go with this messaging, but it is, I think, going to be easier to define the race as a referendum on Trump. That it will be to convince Americans that the Biden economy is actually doing awesome, and they’re doing awesome under it.

What would Biden have to do to pick up new voters? Like like like we talked in the beginning about Okay. So we have a little bit of backsliding. He’s still winning most head to heads. It’s like two incumbents running against each other, right, which is like a wild dynamic.

Is it, like, maybe Biden will win the new people who couldn’t vote before now they can? And, like, is it just, like, death and demographics, like, older trump voters? They’ve died and, like, new people coming on lot, like because I think a lot about persuasion, and I I know who who’s on the table for persuasion, and it is a small, small margin. So, like, yeah, do you see a pickup opportunity for Biden?

So I’m writing about that this week, but I I actually see some more challenges for Biden with third party drain than the no labels piece. And I just think that the RfK Junior and Cornell West are as big of a factor in twenty twenty four as no labels. And where they become really critical, especially for Biden, is that those are kinds of candidates who will siphon off younger voters of color. So if you’re talking about new people coming in, if they’re younger, they couldn’t vote in twenty twenty, maybe they sat on the sidelines in twenty twenty, or they voted in twenty sixteen for a third party candidate. Those I think are the kinds of voters that Biden cannot afford to lose as much as he can afford to lose these swing voters.

And their appeal in a time like this where everybody feels disappointed, disillusioned, cynical is we’re the outsiders, we’re anti establishment, I know you hate both parties come with us because no labels is essentially, you know, it’s an establishment operation. That’s likely to nominate. A typical elected official. So that’s number one. The other is if you assume that Trump has a ceiling in the swing states, of let’s say you know, anywhere from forty seven to forty nine percent.

Biden can afford to lose a little bit, but not a whole lot. So if I’m the Biden campaign, yes, holding on to all those voters who showed up in twenty twenty, And hoping that maybe some of the Trump voters don’t show up. He maxed out his support in twenty twenty. Discouraging those voters. I mean, that to me is my other question is what about those those folks who in twenty twenty voted for Donald Trump or who are voting in Republican primaries right now who say, I think Trump’s guilty, I think in some polls, I’ve seen as many as thirteen percent of Republicans.

I do think Trump’s guilty of these crimes. I really don’t wanna see Trump nominated. What did they do? In twenty twenty four.

Yeah. So I really agree with this. Although, I just wanna underscore your point about the young voters who get siphoned off by these, like, weirdo third party things where people are like, yeah, you know, pox on both their houses and we did our last episode on no labels. And I think that no labels is dangerous precisely because the only people they really appeal to are the people that I focus on my persuasion efforts, which is sort of college educated suburban, sort of center right independence, soft GOP voters. That’s who they siphon off.

So they’re just, like, grabbing that nine percent or something that Biden really needs as part of the not Pro Joe Biden coalition, the anti trump coalition. And every time you drain or split the anti trump coalition, you are making it more likely that Donald Trump is the nominee. But the other thing is is, like, my fear, my fear is around these enthusiasm levels. Like, twenty twenty two, despite the low enthusiasm for Joe Biden, Democrats were still able to pull it out because they won over those persuadable voters. Right?

But the Trump effect where Trump pulls out all these people wasn’t there. So my concern is that you’ve got diminished enthusiasm for Joe Biden, And potentially, like, Trump always has these low propensity voters who turn out for just him. And so you’ve gotta offset that. Like, I think about this all the time. This point you made about, like, who doesn’t vote?

And so I’ve seen three areas where you get people who held their nose and voted for Trump. These two time Trump voters, but, like, they are not happy having to do it. Three things that make them say I’m not doing it again. One is January sixth. There were people who after that were like, never again, I won’t do it.

One is abortion Like, there are some people college educates for whom abortion was not an issue before, and now it’s a little bit more of an issue. And the third one is some of the foreign policy, and they’re very narrow lanes. Like, there’s not a lot of people in them. Like, we do hear from people for whom Ukraine has become a very important issue as a Republican, and the cow towing to Russia is a thing that they really hate. So, like, the question is is, like, what do those people do?

Do they stay home? Do they hold their nose and vote for him again? Do they vote for Joe Biden?

Or third party?

Do they go third party? I think this is where the no labels thing, like, that is who they siphon off.

Yeah. I think that’s an a really excellent point. And I also wanna underscore your point about twenty twenty two, which I don’t think we talk about enough. Democrats are rightly enthusiastic about the fact that they did much better in twenty twenty two than they had any right to do. But I do wonder if that has clouded their vision in terms of what twenty twenty four would look like.

There’s this sort of like sense of overconfidence. Like, it doesn’t matter. Like, oh, so the economy’s bad. And Biden’s unpopular. Don’t worry.

Like, we win as long as trump’s the nominee and we make it about Magga, we did it in twenty twenty, and we did it in twenty twenty two, and we did it in twenty eighteen. So Hey, just don’t get so wrapped up about all these things about the economy and the numbers. We we know we’ll make Trump, the issue like we did in every one of the elections where Trump was in the picture. And I don’t know. Voters are in a very angry, disillusioned place right now.

The number of people I don’t care what kind of group you walk into. If you ask them, do you wanna see a rematch voters are like, I would rather eat a bowl of glass than to have to go through this again. And that’s what I’m wondering too. When you see the polling right now showing, especially younger voters, voters of color who are less interested and enthusiastic about the upcoming election. How much of that is those voters also saying?

I really can’t think about this right now. I’m so just maybe I’ll think about it next year, but I am just I can’t go there. This is just a nightmare.

I’m sure that’s right. And I know that’s right in part because when I listen to voters, one of the funniest things is, like, a lot of them have not clocked yet. That Joe Biden, Donald Trump, are likely to be the nominees.

They really believe that something can change. A number of them, like, well, you know, If Biden is the nominee, if Trump wins, you’re like, okay. I mean, you’re right. Anything can happen. We’ve seen it before, but, yes, they don’t have the same level of Washington, DC, just assumption that this is a foregone conclusion.

It’s just Trump Biden everybody’s better deal with it.

Yeah. And, like, I can sort of see why people might still not be certain it’s Trump. Like, there’s a Republican primary going on. It’s like, there’s a lot of noise about other candidates or whatever, but, like, the extent to which people are like, are you sure it’s gonna be bind again? And they’re like, yeah.

Yeah. It is.

I mean, there’s no one running against Tim, if that counts.

Right. Yeah. Like, unless something exogenous, that could always happen. But right now, yeah.

That is your favorite word, isn’t it? You’ve really made that word very popular. Do you

know why I like that word is because I think it encompasses all of the DC hopes and dreams. Right? It’s just like one word that says all of the things that are constantly telling me, but couldn’t this happen, and couldn’t this happen, and couldn’t this happen. And, like, maybe,

yeah, and so maybe.

That’s One exogenous event. Sure. But also, then there’s just the reality. Then there’s, like, playing the ball as it lays. So, okay, so you brought something else up here, which is, like, even if Biden was presiding over perfect peace and prosperity, He is still hobbled by one critical thing, which is how these voters think about his age.

And you heard how harsh the Democrats were doing when we talked to Jen Saki a couple weeks ago. But the flippers are even meaner. Let’s listen.

My biggest fear with Biden running and possibly winning is that he will not last through his next turn, which means Kamala will be the president of this country. Which frightens me to the poor.

When my grandmother was pushing eighty, we were not sure if she should have the ability to drive anymore. And super letting people run our country, and that’s terrifying.

For me, it’s not age, right, because Ronald Reagan was very old but he was very capable.

So I don’t really care how old somebody is, but they’re all there and they look strong. Biden doesn’t look strong. He looks like he could fall over at any minute, and that’s you know, concerning three.

That he just doesn’t seem mentally stable.

Yeah. He he looks like he’s really struggling mentally and fist living. He’s fallen down, what, three, four times in the last couple months. I mean, come on.

Yeah. Can’t fight his way off the stage and things like that.

It’s not the age. It’s their mental acuity. Biden is basically a walking CTV head injury at this point. The guy stumbles. He fumbles over things.

He’s checked out. I mean, you look at him. I’m surprised they have not used the constitution to try to take power from him and shovel them off to the old folks.

These people voted for Joe Biden in twenty twenty.

Well, I was so hoping you would get the woman who talked about grandma and the card keys. I’m gonna use that line. It is, you know, it’s sort of like, hey, Nana, we we we’re gonna not be able to let you drive. And yet, that same age person is the leader of the free world. Right?

That was quite something.

And I think the reason that it sticks out is because what it reminds you of is that people have context for what an eighty year old’s capabilities are. Now sure some of them might tell you my eighty year old, you know, mom is still crushing it and she runs laps around me. Right. But most people’s experience is that their eighty year old parent has slowed down consider and is very retired and is not somebody that you’d be like, please preside over the nuclear arsenal, and, like, have to work this incredibly massive job. The biggest job there is in the entire world.

That’s right.

And so, you know, talking to Jen Saki about it was great. Jen’s candid, but, like, Should Biden confront this head on? Because they’re kinda doing this rushing it aside, like, it’s not a big deal. And I’m not sure. I think that’s the right way to handle this.

What do you think?

I I agree. I really enjoyed that conversation that you all had because, you know, really, the only experience we had with this is then one of the voters brought this up was Ronald Reagan. Well, obviously, number one, Ronald Reagan was was younger. And number two, it was in the eighties when we didn’t have the internet. You know, they’re these stories of, well, they just took Rob, Reagan, and know, he he wasn’t, it’s not that he wasn’t mobile, but, you know, he was a little stiff, but we would just put him on a horse Right?

And then let the photographers come in and take pictures of him on the horse. Well, okay. That worked really well in nineteen eighty three. You can’t do that. In twenty twenty three.

You can’t do that in an era where people are literally watching him every day. I do think and maybe Jen said this for you said this, He does need to get on to the shows with actual interviewers and showing he can do the job. I don’t think he’s sat down with any major newspaper since he’s been president of the United States, the New York Times, the Washington Post, obviously not done the Sunday shows. Forget about trying to have people think he’s young, like, oh, let’s put him on a bike. Let’s put him on a horse.

I don’t think people really care whether or not he’s he’s going for a run or not. What they care about is when someone asks him a difficult question, he is able to answer it and answer it effectively. And so I think that’s what would be, to me, the more effective way to handle this issue.

Yeah. Although we are taping this and we are still reeling from Hamas’s terrorist attack in Israel. But Joe Biden gave a speech a couple days ago, in which I thought it was the best speech of his presidency.

Mhmm.

He was unequivocal. He was sharp. And I saw it as, like, This is something he truly believes deep down. He feels really strongly about, and, like, as a result, he is at his best. Do you think that there’s a chance that in this moment he could redefine the way people see him at all or no?

Because this is something that while it is horrific, and I think you have attention right now, the American public, really focused on it, I would venture that a month or two from now, we’re gonna be back talking about what you and I’ve spent most of this conversation talking about, which is what is the economy looking like?

Well, so Joe Biden’s weaker than he was in twenty twenty because he’s older, and he’s got a record, and people can’t project their hopes and dreams onto him. But Trump is weaker too, because He lost the twenty twenty election, contrary to popular opinion on the Republican side. He attempted a coup, and he’s now got ninety one felony Charlie Sykes we’ve heard a range of views on how these flipper types are thinking about Trump’s legal troubles. Let’s listen.

Zurichiko case for me in Georgia is the one that stands. You’re talking about at the time the sitting president trying to interfere in an election that he is directly involved in. That’s unprecedented. The the that’s treasonous to me.

Whether it’s Biden or Trump or Biden’s family or Trump’s kids or whatever, they’re all gonna go through all these legal proceedings that you’re not gonna know Was the judge biased? Was the prosecutor biased? Was the CIA involved? Was the FBI involved? Were they paid off?

Was somebody else let go? I mean, There’s scandal on top of scan on top of scandals. It only just comes down to who you prefer to begin with. You know, Joe Biden’s brought up in the same issue with the documents, you know, so it kinda feels like they sorta cancel each other out. They’re both sorta being looked at for that.

I expect him to act

like a you know, unethical bastard or whatever. Sorry. But, you know, and he keeps doing it. And you’re just not surprised. I think some of those Some of those cases are not very good.

Some of them are politically motivated, but I think the one with where he took the secret records back to Mar a Lago, I that one’s I think they got him on that one.

The first time that, you know, something took place legally, actually, against the man, I was totally into it, meaning wanting to identify and try and and the facts and trust in our legal system, and it was a lot to keep up with. Now it is white noise.

Now it’s white noise. I gotta tell you. We opened our season talking about the indictments. I think that there was a theory of the case, right, that all the indictments, they kind of lead to an accumulated wake that kinda turns people off from Trump. We play the smattering of clips.

We could play you a million, and it would be a bunch of people kinda struggling to tell you which case they can remember the details of which ones they care about. But, like, how do you think the swing voters will process this as you go into an election, because I guess one way to think about it is, like you’ve said, and I think you’ve made this point. It’s a really good one. It’s really true. Trump is receded in people’s minds.

And so, like, they just sort of, like, forget what they hate about Trump while they’re, like, pretty clear right now and what they don’t like about Biden. That’s, like, the dynamic right now. That won’t be the dynamic in a year. Right.

But

did the any of the individual cases matter or is it more just, oh, no. Trump sucks. And I am, like, tired of this guy. I don’t want him again.

I think about that a lot. I mean, the other thing you’ve heard in at least one of those groups was the sense that you know, a couple of these cases seemed less serious. Mhmm. Right? The New York case and others.

So a guilty verdict in New York clearly holds different weight with these voters than the Mar a Lago case. So I do think that matters. And I guess at the end of the day, Sarah Longwell of those, especially the Mar a lago case, or the Georgia case in January six. One of those comes out with a conviction of some sort. Telling voters over and over again.

Okay. This may not be new. This may have been what you already believed about our politicians or the white noise or all of that, but this would be the first time in American history that we would elect someone to office who is actually convicted of crimes. And again, it’s been it’s quite remarkable how we we just that thirty years ago, forty years ago, you say you know, one party will nominate a a guy who could be convicted of crimes. He would have said that’s absolutely impossible.

That would never happen. So I’m not convinced of anything anymore. Being true, Sarah, but that just seems like a really, really difficult hurdle to overcome. And again, not necessarily to change people’s minds, but to your point, the point we made earlier about who shows up and who doesn’t. Are you gonna be as excited to turn out for Donald Trump if you were already a little bit wary of the the sort of drama surrounding him, didn’t like what happened on January sixth.

Now there are these convictions do you say I’m either staying home or I’m just gonna, you know, skip the top of the ticket and vote for my Republican member of Congress, Senator, that to me is the bigger question. So less about changing people’s minds and more about the impact on certain people deciding to be part of process.

Diminishing enthusiasm. Yeah.

There we go. That’s

a nice term.

Speaking of which, so obviously, One of the ways that Trump wants to mitigate the idea that people would not vote for him for these reasons is that he will both run, like, a full frontal assault on the judicial system itself to say that this is corrupt. Right. We’re already seeing this. There’s two tiers of justice And also by trying to make things sort of more equivalent in both, while Joe Biden also had these documents at his house and they were by his car and his garage, and also Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden.

Right? So I wanna get into the hunter Biden stuff because they’re gonna try to hang that around Biden’s neck. And we do hear some people in the the swing voter group say things like Joe Biden shouldn’t have made fifty million dollars if he wasn’t doing something shady. Like, they’re picking up some of the stuff and have that sort of muddied waters around the corruption. But by and large, people are letting the hunter stuff from his addiction to business dealings, current legal troubles, just like roll off their back.

Let’s hear how they talk about it, starting with some of their reactions to the notion of a Biden impeachment.

How big can I roll my eyes?

I mean, it’s just so stupid. Like, every single person in Washington scratches each other’s back. There’s so much stuff. It’s all smoke and mirrors, like, every single one of them. Like, if you have any family or anyone that you know that deals with politics, you know you they help each other out.

It doesn’t make me feel any different about Biden because every family has skeletons. He could have raised him the right way, but you can’t carry them on for the rest of their lives. Why do we care if he has a child that has a direct problem everybody has someone in their family that has a drug problem. Why do we care? Just like, put them in a drug rehab or something and talk about them ten years from now.

I mean, Really? Why did they even break it up all the time? It doesn’t even matter. I don’t really care about, you know, what his family is doing. I don’t care about his family life so much.

How is he running the country? I don’t care if he’s a terrible person, but they’ve taken care of the country. It is kinda like he’s kinda not doing either one too well right now he’s hiding that, and he’s doing a bad job. So it’s just another strike against him, but I don’t really care about that part of it that much. It doesn’t affect me, you know,

I gotta say, like, I’m not sure there’s anything that’s been more consistent in the groups of swing voters and Democratic voters than them really not caring about Hunter Biden. And, like, the amount of times that people are like, there’s one in every family. Like, everyone’s got one. Like, And so I but what do you you’d obviously, like, they’re gonna try to use this.

I agree completely with what you’re saying, which was this did not seem like something that was going to be the maker break issue for them. They’ve already told us what the maker break issues are the economy and his age. So corruption and, you know, you also see a group of people who not surprisingly, like so many other voters feel incredibly cynical about Washington in general. And I think This is part of the reason why Democrats attacks on Trump for getting all the inside deals for his kids and having all the stuff that involved his family and his family business and their relationship with official business. Just really didn’t cut it because if voters believe, like that, one woman told us, look, Everybody does it.

How do you think business gets done in Washington? Yeah. You use your name, and you use that to you know, leverage money and power and access, and that’s the way it goes. But the threat, I do think for Republicans who think that putting the impeachment in front of voters is going to help them I think what this suggests is, first of all, you don’t need to get your base any more interested in getting rid of Biden. They’re already fired up.

You don’t need to impeach Biden to get them excited to show up. And the second is if you wanna win over those swing voters, he talks to them about the economy, and he talks to them about ability to finish the job given his age. But, certainly, you could even just talk nonstop about the economy, and that will be much more persuasive than talking about Hunter and the the charges and the laptop and all of that.

I agree with John Federman. And I’m like, oh, you’re gonna impeach him. Okay. Go ahead. Take your best shot.

I think this is it would be a huge mistake on their part. Because I think the Republicans, as you might have noticed, having a little bit of trouble convincing people that they they’re good at governing. Like, they’re that they’re good at just, like, the normal stuff. And so I I’m not sure that, like, an abiding impeachment is what people are after right now, and Yeah. You can talk about crime.

You can talk about the economy, and he is vulnerable and and talk about his age.

Yeah. Emigration. And, I mean, even if you didn’t bring personal if you said, what’s just the policy issues to discuss with these voters? Immigration crime and the economy would be incredibly effective. And you’re right.

The age thing is sort of baked in. Obviously, we know Trump references this all the time and has referenced it in his ads showing biden tripping and falling upstairs and looking around a stage and looking like there’s no worries going. But I think for for real swing voters who just feel like these voters did in the spoken script, this is a choice of the lesser of two evils. Being able to provide a path forward for where America’s gonna go economically for the next four years how we’re gonna get prices down and make life more affordable for people is gonna break through more than one more ad showing Biden tripping or one more ad showing Donald Trump’s mug shot.

Yeah. I get a lot of comments about this show where people are like, I like it, but I’m sort of pressed afterwards or like, I can’t listen to the people. And I’m like, I need people to understand how much more people trust Republicans and Trump on the economy. And I do think some of that is, like, really baked in impressions of the parties. It’s, like, Republicans are still running on some Reagan fumes, and some things like they’re better at foreign policy, they’re better at the economy, but, like, people just have those impressions and, like, by kind of a wide margin.

And so I do think that Biden is gonna have to figure out how to talk to people, not, like, as you point out, not in the, hey, it could have been worse, but, like, in a real vision, and this is where I think the age to me, the biggest problem is that, like, you need somebody who can really communicate in this moment. And when I see him do it on Israel, I sort of feel like It’s in there. Like, you guys are gonna have to let him go make this case for economic recovery and how he’s gonna make lives better, and most importantly, You gotta unlock the things people already know or already believe. And so people do believe Biden cares about them more. Right?

They do believe that Biden understands it. And so, like, that piece of it, I feel like you’ve gotta really unlock as you get into this campaign. And, yeah, and then they’ve gotta really hate Trump, which is a feat I think Donald Trump will take care of just by existing. That’s me. Amy Walter.

Groupy hall of famer. What do you think of the whole groupie? Do we like being

a I like focus groupie. I like focus groupie. I’m a focus group. Also a focus group? Yeah.

I think people would love to have a t shirt.

I think That says I’m a focus group.

I think merch, merch my the merch is very effective. I think. So you may wanna you might wanna go down that route.

I would wear one.

Okay. Alright. I’m gonna get you one for our next show. When you come on for for number five, thank you so much for joining us, and thanks to all of you for listening. To the Focus Secret Podcast, remember to rate review and subscribe, and we will see you all next week.