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If you wanted to, you could consume nothing but presidential campaign coverage all day every day. But how much of it would leave you feeling better informed about casting what may be the most important vote of your life? Not better informed about the campaign as a sporting event, with all the expert play-by-play, color commentary, and stats. But better informed about questions that may not have easy, satisfying, or entertaining answers? Better prepared to think, and not just react?
On this episode of Dastardly Cleverness, we go hunting for that kind of election coverage, find a little, and try to supply some ourselves. I’m joined by two people I can always count on to leave me better informed.
Mike Madrid is a co-founder of the Lincoln Project and one of the country’s top political consultants, with special expertise on Latino voting trends. Mike previously served as the press secretary for the California Assembly Republican leader, as the political director for the California Republican Party, and as a senior adviser to both Republicans and Democrats. He’s the author of the upcoming book The Latino Century.
And Zach Friend has worked for multiple presidential campaigns, the White House Council of Economic Advisers, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives, and has served for multiple terms as an elected official in Santa Cruz County, California. Zach is the author of the book On Message.
— Spencer Critchley
Links
The Latino Century, by Mike Madrid (publication date: June 25, 2024)
On Message, by Zach Friend
Transcript
00:00:02:01 – 00:00:07:13
Spencer Critchley
Welcome to Dastardly Cleverness in the Service of Good. I’m Spencer Critchley, and I’m joined this time by Mike Madrid.
00:00:08:09 – 00:00:10:18
Mike Madrid
Great to be with the both of you. Looking forward to the conversation.
00:00:10:22 – 00:00:12:25
Spencer Critchley
It’s great to have you, Mike. And Zach Friend.
00:00:13:05 – 00:00:16:04
Zach Friend
It’s great to see you again, Spencer and Mike. Looking forward to the conversation.
00:00:16:26 – 00:00:30:27
Spencer Critchley
The first thing I want to ask you both is looking at the media coverage of the 2024 election so far. What do you see as being done wrong or done right, or what are the gaps in particular that we might try to fill? What’s Mike, let’s start with you.
00:00:31:09 – 00:00:56:28
Mike Madrid
Well, I think the first thing to understand is that the nature of media, the nature of coverage has really changed. It’s been changing. That’s not atypical. But we used to look, for example, at the European model and say a lot of their you know, their news outlets are much more partizan than ours were. We kind of had these three objective news sources that would kind of bring people to a common discussion of what the issues actually were.
00:00:58:00 – 00:01:19:03
Mike Madrid
Today, we’re not only not talking about the same issues, there’s obviously this enormous partizan bias based off of which platform you’re consuming your news from. And unfortunately I’ve found the best way to get objective news about what’s happening in the United States is now to go to European news sources, ironically enough, to find out what what is what is objective news here.
00:01:19:03 – 00:01:40:16
Mike Madrid
People with a little bit less bias because it’s so difficult to kind of discern, you know, some of the elements of what’s happening from a partizan perspective. So, look, and I don’t know if there’s any way out of that at the moment. I think that until there is an appetite for objective news and somebody can figure out a way to monetize that, we’ll we’re stuck kind of in this doom loop for for the foreseeable future.
00:01:40:17 – 00:02:00:22
Mike Madrid
In fact, it’s getting it’s getting much worse. You’re seeing layoffs at the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal — The Messenger completely imploded. The legacy media, as it’s called, is kind of going away and understanding that I think gets to the the you know, the kind of the peanut of the question here, which is what is that creating?
00:02:00:22 – 00:02:25:06
Mike Madrid
What kind of vacuums opening up as a result of that? What are we no longer covering? And that’s that’s to me, that’s the real danger is is when we have people who are watching Fox News and think that that is one actual news or two, that it’s objective, unbiased information that they’re consuming. You know, people in the MSNBC’s side don’t realize they’re doing the exact same thing.
00:02:25:06 – 00:02:56:25
Mike Madrid
You’re cable news is not news, that they’re not trying to hide that. And I’m sure that will upset some of your viewers by saying, no, this is the truth and this is objectivity. No, no, it’s truly not. If you’re if you’re if you’re consuming cable news, you’re missing 80% of what, you know, in-depth, deep, knowledgeable news coverage was you’ve bought into an anger machine that is driving your own outrage, your own fears as a way of algorithmically connecting you to their screen to make money off of it.
00:02:56:25 – 00:03:21:13
Mike Madrid
That’s how they’ve decided to monetize that venue and that’s all three of the major networks. It’s the only way that they’re surviving, and two of the three are doing a good job of it. But that that ultimately becomes the problem. I think that needs to be addressed. And again, Spencer, I think that’s what you’re asking, which is there’s no longer these policy discussions or longform investigative understandings of what is happening on a policy front.
00:03:21:13 – 00:03:39:26
Mike Madrid
We don’t have policy discussions anymore in a real meaningful way. This is really truly about, you know, kind of culture war. And so we fight more about Taylor Swift than we do about, you know, the situation in Ukraine. And we can we can argue that that’s kind of where the the people are at, where the public is at.
00:03:39:26 – 00:04:05:18
Mike Madrid
And there’s a lot of truth to that. But there’s a certain leadership, certain obligation that’s required of an institution like the media to to establish that as primacy is what are the issues. And again, I’m taking this back to the the CBS, NBC, ABC days, right, with only three talking heads, usually some older white male guys – no offense, fellas – but that were just kind of talking and telling us what the news is.
00:04:05:22 – 00:04:09:12
Spencer Critchley
I’m especially offended. Zach – you only zinged Zach with one of those, but you got me –
00:04:09:12 – 00:04:31:14
Mike Madrid
He’s got the best hair, though. I mean, of all of us, that would make it on NBC as an anchor. It would be Zach. So we got to remind ourselves of that. But. But they would. They would not just provide the news. They would also tell us what the news of the day was. And there’s a lot of trust that goes on in that as an institution, as we we just believe that what we were being told was was what we should be focused on.
00:04:31:24 – 00:05:07:03
Mike Madrid
And then here’s objectively the facts information kind of make your judgments from there. What that provided was a common understanding as a people, Republican, Democrat, men, women, old, young, black, white, brown, whatever we had in common agreement on what the topics facing the nation were for that day that no longer exists. And until there is something that can bring us around this common campfire to have these discussions, the chances of further Balkanization, I think, are much, much greater than they are less.
00:05:07:10 – 00:05:28:05
Spencer Critchley
Yeah, we could. I think I’d love to do a whole episode just about that. I do the same thing. Like I’ll put up that screen where you can watch five or six different networks at once, and one of them will be the BBC. And it’s fascinating to watch BBC, MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, and and just notice just the visual difference of what’s coming in and then tune in to the BBC coverage.
00:05:28:05 – 00:05:32:06
Spencer Critchley
I do the same thing when I’m looking for something that will feel –
00:05:32:06 – 00:05:57:19
Mike Madrid
Yeah, I think the best way to answer that question for Americans to understand what’s wrong with American media is to watch the BBC just to see how much we’ve changed. Like we’re we’re like a sports team. There’s the running chyron, there’s the comments on the side. There’s the fight on screen between panelists. It’s all designed to hyper-stimulate us as an algorithmic way to keep us engaged on that screen.
00:05:58:08 – 00:06:07:01
Mike Madrid
And the BBC doesn’t do that. I mean, I’m not saying that that alone makes it better news, but at least it tells you what what the objective is of that platform.
00:06:07:17 – 00:06:28:02
Spencer Critchley
Well, and of course, there’s a couple of issues here. I mean, you know, in the world of Fox News, well, all of them, all the commercial media are facing this pressure. You describe where they have to draw viewers or else they go out of business no matter what their intentions. But then there’s also, you know, the whole there’s a whole rising opinion, especially on the sort of academic left, that there’s no such thing as objectivity.
00:06:28:15 – 00:07:00:15
Spencer Critchley
And, you know, “All news should have a political viewpoint. Otherwise it is false., the pretense of objectivity is falsehood,” and this is the sort of thing that could easily occupy a whole episode. But, you know, I agree that while, of course, objectivity, there’s no such thing as perfect objectivity, there is such a thing as a meeting place where we agree to discuss things based on evidence and logic so we can have arguments, but we agree to the rules of the game, recognizing none of us knows the truth with any absolute certainty.
00:07:00:19 – 00:07:27:06
Spencer Critchley
But we can agree not to say things that are false. You know, if we make an argument to cite evidence that can be checked and try to connect our arguments with logic, and that’s kind of the essence of the of the public square. But as I say, we could do a whole episode about that. Zach, what’s your quick take on what’s being missed right now in the coverage of the 2024 election context?
00:07:27:06 – 00:07:47:19
Zach Friend
I think that to Mike’s point, what they’re focusing on is traditional, the horse race. I mean, every day it’s a new poll, but there’s no context as to why we’re getting the numbers that we’re getting in. The whole thing now that’s driving its own narrative becomes its own self-fulfilling prophecy with people. And to Mike’s point that we’re covering the culture war, not the policy.
00:07:47:19 – 00:08:12:18
Zach Friend
The irony is, is that the culture war is actually driving the policy. So Ukraine is being driven by Taylor Swift discussions and what tribal team you’re actually on. So they are closely aligned, even though they’re not necessarily viewed that way, because you end up in a very tribal context. I know that, Spencer, you basically wrote a book on this whole subject to some degree, but to me, the context really matters.
00:08:12:18 – 00:08:25:08
Zach Friend
You can’t just throw numbers out there about how Biden and Trump are doing in Wisconsin without having an understanding of of the sample size where the political attitudes are right now, etc.. But there are there’s no context being provided at all.
00:08:25:19 – 00:09:00:26
Spencer Critchley
You know, there’s something that I think about quite a lot and I’ve written about it a little bit is the Infantilization of Americans through having this intensely marketing saturated economy, including in the media where essentially the customer is always right and you’re just looking for whichever customer niche you’re serving. And so you must keep them interested, you must keep them entertained as if, you know, they’re they’re kind of, you know, princes and princesses at court who must not be bored at all costs.
00:09:01:09 – 00:09:26:05
Spencer Critchley
And so I think this is part of what leads to the trivialization of news. Everything must be entertaining. I think Mike mentioned a lot of it is so much like sports coverage and I agree with both of you on this score that you have very, very serious issues at stake that literally affect people’s lives. I mean, they’re literally life and death decisions being made in electing these leaders.
00:09:26:26 – 00:09:46:13
Spencer Critchley
And it’s treated as if it’s, you know, an episode of American Idol or whatever, because that’s what it has to compete with. And the sheer triviality. And I don’t think this is true of all the coverage. I think that what gets lost is there are a lot of really intelligent, thoughtful people making commentary on TV every single day.
00:09:46:13 – 00:09:53:16
Spencer Critchley
It’s just that the overall impression that I think most people get is not that it’s extremely trivial.
00:09:54:00 – 00:10:22:19
Zach Friend
Let me ask a question of you, Spencer, and actually, Mike, on this. And if if one of these networks were to make a decision, an editorial decision to really drive true policy discussion, I mean, let’s just say that they they Fox News or MSNBC tomorrow started having much more in-depth looks at policy, less culture war stuff. Would the viewers would their viewers actually shift opinion or would they just.
00:10:22:19 – 00:10:23:20
Spencer Critchley
I think they’d tune out.
00:10:24:17 – 00:10:44:15
Mike Madrid
Yeah, I mean, look, there’s good I agree I think they would tune out. But the question to me is why right. Like the PBS NewsHour still does this. Now there’s a nonprofit model and we’re seeing that in traditional journalism, too, where we are actually getting like Calmatters, for example, here in California does an exceptional job of doing longform journalism.
00:10:44:15 – 00:11:04:29
Mike Madrid
They’ve got 70 writers, 70 reporters on staff, and they’re going to be hiring more at the same time. You know, you’re seeing a collapse of an institution in the Los Angeles Times, like literally in the same same month. So the question we’ve got to ask ourselves is, are we trying to to monetize objective news in a way that no longer works?
00:11:04:29 – 00:11:40:11
Mike Madrid
The answer, I think, is undeniably yes. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a need for it in a society, democratic society, small d democratic society. It’s one of the pillars of what makes a democratic society work. But we can’t expect somebody to be making money off of it. I mean, as long as there’s a nonprofit model that can work and it seems to be those are emerging, we may look back at the last 250 years of history and say, how did we allow private enterprise and for profit, you know, you know, models for for for news.
00:11:40:11 – 00:12:02:01
Mike Madrid
And obviously, there’s a there’s a First Amendment reason. But like William Randolph Hearst was was not a good guy. Right. That’s how the Spanish-American War started. Right. The yellow journalism was basically fake news. We called it yellow journalism. You know, Rupert Murdoch is an American and not a good guy running Fox News like that. There’s the for profit taxation of news.
00:12:02:01 – 00:12:26:16
Mike Madrid
I don’t know if that’s the right way to put it, but that that may, you know, have been a bigger danger to democracy in society all along. I’m not saying it shouldn’t exist. I’m saying if we’re going to have a public square, we should have a truly public square, not like an Elon Musk version of Twitter X, but something that is there is no profit incentive or motive or control by any one entity and or person or a party’s agenda.
00:12:26:24 – 00:12:29:20
Mike Madrid
It’s a true public square, and I think that that model is emerging.
00:12:29:21 – 00:13:11:09
Spencer Critchley
If it can survive. There’s certainly some nonprofit news organizations, including at the local level, actually, including where I am right now in the Monterey Bay area in California. But I don’t think it’s established yet whether that’s going to, you know, be scalable and work nationally. This raises key questions within the American context about First Amendment and free markets that make this a very hard sell, although it didn’t used to be, as you say, Mike, and when there used to be this CBS, NBC, ABC News model, those news divisions lost money and lost money proudly.
00:13:11:09 – 00:13:37:06
Spencer Critchley
But that was partly because of stricter regulation of the public airwaves back then. And the story since then has been a much more free market with deregulation, especially during the nineties, during the Clinton administration. And a lot of people thought, well, this’ll be great because it’ll democratize everything, reduce the centralized control over the news and, you know, let a thousand flowers bloom, etc. I think I’m quoting Mao there.
00:13:37:26 – 00:13:56:25
Spencer Critchley
That’s not somebody I ever like to quote, but you get the idea. But the trouble is, instead, what we’ve seen is what we’ve seen where people just micro-targeting their audiences and feed them whatever they want. And in the case of some of these outlets, it’s just whatever lie they want to be told. As we’ve seen from their internal emails, they’re fully aware of what they’re doing.
00:13:56:25 – 00:14:21:28
Spencer Critchley
They just figure out what lies people want to be told and they tell them those lies. I agree that it could work better. At the moment, I’m not optimistic we’re going to get there any time soon. Partly because of the how entrenched this view of a free market approach to broadcasting is and how addictive it is to get your news.
00:14:21:28 – 00:14:49:06
Spencer Critchley
The way we get it. Sometimes I do the experiment switching from one of the cable news channels to PBS NewsHour, for example, or when I go back to Canada, where I was born and spent much of my life and watch Canadian news, and even I who am hungry for a substance in the news, find it hard to watch because it’s not stimulating enough, which I think is an indication of just how addictive it is when you’re constantly being hit with all that stimulation.
00:14:49:18 – 00:15:07:22
Mike Madrid
Well, it’s like buying, you know, anything in a neon package at the convenience store and, you know, it explodes your taste buds because it’s designed to and then going back and eating broccoli and going, Well, this is boring. Yeah, well, but it’s good for you guys. That’s the way it’s designed to be run. Yeah, it’s a hard sell, but it’s the.
00:15:07:22 – 00:15:27:16
Mike Madrid
Well, not for me, but I mean, for a lot of people, right? Like I’m a I, I’m a, I’m a voracious consumer of news, especially political news, but I don’t have a cable TV subscription. Why? Because that’s not news. Look like you just said that, you know, watching these different news sources, it’s not news like Fox News does not claim to be.
00:15:27:27 – 00:15:32:28
Mike Madrid
They call themselves Fox News, but they’ll say we’re not journalists. It’s literally they’re putting up front about.
00:15:33:02 – 00:15:36:01
Spencer Critchley
When they’re in a court of law, you know.
00:15:36:19 – 00:15:49:10
Mike Madrid
No, no, no, no. To tell the truth, that’s not accurate. No, no, no, no, no, no. Sean HANNITY will say, I’m not a journalist. Rachel MADDOW will Rachel Maddox will say the same thing. These are not journalists. Yes, they’re commentators.
00:15:50:01 – 00:15:52:00
Spencer Critchley
And a lot of people in the public can’t tell the truth.
00:15:52:00 – 00:15:56:26
Mike Madrid
No, they can tell the difference. They don’t care anymore because they’re so added to it.
00:15:57:07 – 00:16:19:24
Spencer Critchley
And as I say, a lot of this is the overall packaging and impression. So, you know, I actually think MSNBC, for example, if I if I run down the list of MSNBC contributors, I think most of them are excellent. I think most of the hosts are really intelligent and really well-informed. But the overall and I know that they don’t intentionally say things that aren’t true.
00:16:19:24 – 00:16:53:23
Spencer Critchley
And if they say something that’s not true, they’ll correct it. But the trouble is, the overall in the overall packaging and impression you get is, oh my God, Trump is so awful, which I agree with. Tell me how awful you think Trump is. And while you know, I might find that sort of fun, it’s not particularly informative. I’d like to narrow in a little bit on some of the specific issues in this campaign and whether they’re being covered right or not or whether we think the candidates are addressing these issues well or not.
00:16:53:23 – 00:17:21:05
Spencer Critchley
And Mike, since you’re one of the country’s top experts on Latino voting and you’ve been writing about this recently, I’ve seen pieces by you in The New York Times and the L.A. Times, for example. I’d like to ask you for your perspective on the Latino population of voters, as well as the issue of immigration. The Republicans have long been demagoguing this issue, and in my opinion, exploiting the usual, you know, bigotry, fear and hatred.
00:17:22:08 – 00:17:43:14
Spencer Critchley
But there’s a there is an issue there. And meanwhile, of course, Biden is having to deal with this issue because there clearly is something happening at the border that needs to be addressed. Mike, could you give me your sense of let’s start with Biden. What’s the challenge he’s facing and how well do you think he and the Democrats are addressing that challenge so far?
00:17:44:11 – 00:18:04:11
Mike Madrid
Well, let me let me kind of set the table a little bit differently here. There’s no question that the Republicans have been demagoguing this issue for the past 30 years, since the mid 1990 here in California. But I also want to make this very clear. The Democrats have had no interest in solving this problem for their own pure political benefit.
00:18:04:24 – 00:18:26:03
Mike Madrid
That is just quantifiable fact. They’ve had many opportunities, both in the Clinton administration, the Obama administration, to solve this problem when they enjoyed support in both houses. There’s a reason why they haven’t solved this problem. The Democrats I’m speaking about. Keep in mind, Barack Obama deported more people than all other presidents in the history of the republic combined.
00:18:27:08 – 00:18:50:04
Mike Madrid
Barack Obama. Joe Biden has waived 23 environmental laws to build a border wall at a faster pace than Donald Trump. So depending on which media you’re consuming, the language of how this is framed is biased towards a direction that says, Oh yeah, the Republicans are horrible on this. I tend to believe that they are, but I also don’t believe the Democrats are that much better.
00:18:50:04 – 00:19:11:29
Mike Madrid
In fact, they’ve been in many ways much more to the right of Republicans when they’ve had the actual opportunity to run from an executive branch, the border. So the fact that Democrats have not to this point done anything on this issue that makes forces the question why? Why not? The answer is because it’s politically benefited them with the growing Latino vote.
00:19:12:08 – 00:19:50:12
Mike Madrid
Now there’s a demographic reason for why both sides are in flux right now. Okay. Where we’re at is the actual Latino vote has changed demographically. Mathematically, in 2007, right before the big economic crash, we saw a virtual collapse in immigration levels that lasted until 20 2013, years of declining immigration. And so the only people that were screaming about immigration at that time were Fox News Republicans talking about caravans and trying to manufacture an issue where it didn’t exist.
00:19:51:05 – 00:20:25:14
Mike Madrid
The problem is it really does exist now. There is a crisis, and I’m using that word methodically, consciously and I think accurately at the border, at the southern border right now. And that crisis is exacerbated by the fact that domestically the Latino voter, which is now overwhelmingly U.S. born, 50% of the fastest growing segment of voters, Latino voters voted in their first election in 2016 or more recently, they’ve only voted the very, very young vote.
00:20:25:14 – 00:20:53:19
Mike Madrid
And those numbers are starting to get very big. But these voters are not Spanish speaking. They’re not foreign born, they’re not naturalized. They’re U.S. born, largely non-college educated, but increasingly more college educated, upwardly mobile, aspirational. And their voting behaviors, at least from polling and results in the last few election cycles, demonstrate their views and attitudes on immigration are not that different from non-Hispanic whites.
00:20:53:23 – 00:21:26:12
Mike Madrid
In fact, they’re only slightly, marginally less motivated by the issue than whites are. So that’s a real conundrum for for for the Democrats. And you’re starting to see that in Washington, realizing everything that we have stereotypically built around this narrative of who Latino voters are is proving untrue. It’s not what it’s not what what the story is. Now, you’re seeing right wing, you know, people characterizing it’s too and and the hypocrisy of the right is predicated on the idea that, oh, yeah, we’re winning more and more Latino voters.
00:21:26:12 – 00:21:59:25
Mike Madrid
Yeah, we’re winning even half of the Latino voters that Donald Trump will say. And yet they don’t want more of these voters coming in. And of course, undocumented people can’t vote anyway. So the Republicans are kind of lying on both sides of this. I’m not saying these guys are good actors on this. Quite, quite the contrary. But the conundrum and I wrote this in The New York Times piece, is that in order for Joe Biden to fix the problem he has, both with Latino voters and with his weak numbers in the middle is to come and triangulate the way Bill Clinton did on this and crime issues in the mid 1990s.
00:22:00:06 – 00:22:20:01
Mike Madrid
Come and seize the issue. Seize the narrative from Trump and the Republicans, fix the border. There’s nothing racist about about fixing the border. I mean, I have to say that. But you have to say that in these times and there’s nothing wrong with fixing your border as long as you’re not using, you know, some of the horrific language that Republicans are using.
00:22:20:01 – 00:22:38:00
Mike Madrid
It’s not it’s not a policy problem here. It’s a tenor language town problem. And one of the challenges I’ve always had as a as a Republican, Latino is is agreeing with some of these folks that we need to fix the border. Because I know that why I want to fix the border is so very different than why so many other Republicans want to fix the border.
00:22:38:06 – 00:23:04:13
Mike Madrid
But nevertheless, the border does need to be secured. And the awkwardness with which Biden finds himself right now because his coalitions have convinced themselves over the past 25 years that this is a bedrock, foundational, fundamental issue for Latino voters. Despite the fact that Democrats have been losing Latino voters since the 2016 election, four of the last four elections have not been good with four Democrats.
00:23:04:13 – 00:23:29:21
Mike Madrid
With Latinos, they’re losing more and more voters every year. And the reason is because they keep speaking to Latinos as if they just arrived yesterday and are you know, you appeal to them on Univision and you talk about immigration issues and we’re all farmworkers. You know, that stereotype. I worked for a time in the mid 1990s, but what worked in the last century isn’t working in this century.
00:23:29:27 – 00:23:52:29
Mike Madrid
And the Democratic Party has to develop a more prospective aspirational middle class message than it has in the past few years. And that, in a nutshell, is what is causing the Democratic Party to lose working class voters is that the Democratic Party is really not a working class party anymore. They very much view themselves as like a party of FDR.
00:23:52:29 – 00:24:01:06
Mike Madrid
They’re not. And that’s not Mike Madrid saying that. That’s working class voters saying that like they don’t believe that the Democratic Party is the party of the working man anymore.
00:24:01:25 – 00:24:16:02
Spencer Critchley
Zach, how do you see that from the point of view as somebody who’s been involved in Democratic politics at the national, state and local level, and especially in the communications aspect of it, you’re intimately familiar with this kind of issue. How does it look to you?
00:24:17:03 – 00:24:38:27
Zach Friend
Well, I think that a lot of what Mike is saying is true because all you have to do is look to win. Democrats have been successful over the last 30 years. And as you know, Spencer doing communications for then-Senator Obama, then President Obama, the reality was there was a very different position on this that I actually, I think aligns with Democratic Party values.
00:24:38:27 – 00:25:04:13
Zach Friend
It focused on Dreamers and it focused on aspirational messages. It also focused on on a secure border. John Kerry said it. I mean, if you think about some of the elections, this is what we did. And Joe Biden has been historically pretty moderate on a lot of issues. I think that the border being one of them, I think his policies have actually, interestingly, probably been about as progressive as any president in modern history, the things he’s been able to get done.
00:25:05:11 – 00:25:28:12
Zach Friend
But my my sense would be that that absent this noise, this sort of the noise of the ecosystem that both parties are operating in, I would imagine that the president’s approach would actually be pretty balanced on this if he wasn’t getting, you know, a lot of other and actually some of the approaches he’s taken in the last couple of weeks have shown that.
00:25:29:26 – 00:25:51:05
Zach Friend
I also think that this is an issue that shows how much an issue can be elevated through a media ecosystem, because I think at the end of the day, this isn’t the number one issue facing the country. I mean, it really isn’t. There’s a lot of other challenges, just like people feel the economy is terrible and none of the numbers actually seem to show that right now.
00:25:51:05 – 00:26:12:07
Zach Friend
So the other is zation that’s successful through media ecosystems has really exploded this into the general construct and whether there’s clear issues and by the way, there’s clear humanitarian issues that’s also leading to the border. Great part of this discussion is also not talked about the investment in other countries and things that we used to do historically that are also leading these challenges.
00:26:12:07 – 00:26:35:27
Zach Friend
But I think that at the end of the day, neither party can be driven by the the 8% of their members, you know, that that exist on the extremes, both in the House or mainly in the House, I would say, that are driving everything. I mean, from Republicans being able to inability to keep a speaker because they’ve got a couple of members that that are going to be wild about it.
00:26:35:27 – 00:26:55:05
Zach Friend
And the Democrats in the same thing when it comes to issues like this, if you’re not even willing to have a discussion about this when most of your voters are interested in you having a discussion about this, I think that you do have an issue from a communications perspective. I mean, it’d be fascinating to me to hear whether Mike would get a hearing in the current campaign structure on the Democratic side, Right.
00:26:55:05 – 00:27:17:17
Zach Friend
I mean, would he would how would it how would this message be received by the Biden campaign or the DNC would sort of be an interesting point, because I think that above all, everybody is greatest fear on the Democratic side is another term of Donald Trump. And and who has now that he actually has some level of understanding of what the levers of the presidency can do, I think could be completely untethered.
00:27:17:17 – 00:27:32:11
Zach Friend
I mean, he was barely tethered previously, but I think he’d be completely untethered. And I think that ensuring that there isn’t a second term is as should be, more important than any other issue that the Democrats take on right now. And I think they should be open to these uncomfortable discussions that that I think Mike’s presenting.
00:27:33:07 – 00:27:58:22
Spencer Critchley
Yeah, this this is often described as the vibes aspect these days of politics. Right. Which I think is a kind of a trivial word for a very serious issue. And this turns out to be, I guess, a theme of what we’re talking about here, because I think from a Democratic the Democratic Party’s point of view, talking about immigration and Latinos, I agree with Mike that so much of it is based on these stereotypes, which were stereotypes to begin with, but are now outdated stereotypes.
00:27:59:10 – 00:28:33:24
Spencer Critchley
And I believe the intention to be to treat everybody with equal justice and respect is sincere. But of course, it comes across it comes across as a form of bigotry. It kind of unconscious bigotry where you haven’t really bothered to meet these folks and learn about them as individual human beings, you know, and address them the same way you would with all too often we’re talking about white people, you know, and this is just a characteristic of human nature.
00:28:33:24 – 00:28:51:22
Spencer Critchley
People assume that people like them are normal people and and see them as fully, you know, three dimensional beings and have a hard time seeing other people as anything other than types. But if you’re in politics, you absolutely have to do that. You actually have to meet people and meet them as individuals. So this is the vibes thing, right?
00:28:51:22 – 00:29:31:05
Spencer Critchley
So I think that Democrats often panic. Anytime something like social justice in any aspect comes up because they’re afraid of basically how it’s going to look or feel if they actually address it as a nuanced, complicated issue. If they recognize Latinos, for example, as rising working class, middle class and wealthy class in many cases, and having a whole variety of priorities that have to be addressed, not and not just assume, as Mike says, that all they care about is making sure that immigrants are treated well coming across the border.
00:29:31:11 – 00:29:58:20
Spencer Critchley
All of us should care about that. But it requires getting beyond this kind of vibes oriented. How does this feel in the media sort of approach to all of this stuff? I think crime is is similar. The Republican Party has for a while decades now, since the sixties, really sold rising crime very effectively to their voters and have them in a constant panic about crime.
00:29:58:20 – 00:30:18:27
Spencer Critchley
And it’s no accident, of course, that when you watch the crawls on the right wing networks, the crime you’re seeing is black and brown people ransacking stores right. Or, you know, black neighborhoods in flames and that sort of thing. And that’s going on like 24 hours a day. In fact, violent crime has been declining since the early nineties.
00:30:18:27 – 00:30:36:19
Spencer Critchley
It spiked during the COVID pandemic, but it’s been dropping dramatically. Again, that doesn’t mean there is no crime problem and there certainly are local crime problems across the country in blue and red areas. But this is another one. How do you how do you folks see this crime issue being covered?
00:30:37:01 – 00:31:07:11
Mike Madrid
Well, I mean, look, it’s it’s treated very cosmetically, right? It doesn’t get to the root cause of what we’re actually talking about. So like in a state like California, which which Gavin Newsom would would suggest, you know, as posting safer crime statistic numbers in a state like Florida and or Texas. Technically true. I mean is his right. But when you look at things like homelessness, where homelessness has just exploded in California in a way that is showing that government doesn’t have the ability to actually manage what the problem is at the state or local level.
00:31:08:22 – 00:31:42:24
Mike Madrid
You have to understand that the voters impressions of going out and seeing tents on their sidewalks constantly leads to fears of crime. And I’m not saying that’s rational or that it’s evidence based, but it’s absolutely true, right? People just don’t feel as safe. And there’s probably a human, biological reason for that. And so, you know, as a political consultant, whenever you’re looking at stats or data or evidence, trying to argue that in the face of where voter sentiment is, is usually a losing strategy, people don’t need much.
00:31:42:26 – 00:32:01:29
Mike Madrid
You know, they’re not going to be comforted or cajoled by by data and stats when they don’t feel a certain way. You’re witnessing this right now with consumer confidence, which is just now beginning to come back. Right. People are saying they don’t have confidence in this Biden economy. The Biden administration is going, wait a second, look at every metric.
00:32:01:29 – 00:32:17:19
Mike Madrid
We’re just crushing it. And and they are the numbers are astonishing. The employment numbers are coming way up. You know, GDP growth is just off the charts, but people are going, wait a second, cost me $30 to go out and buy, you know, like a hamburger and a Coke with me and my kid. Like, how is that normal?
00:32:17:19 – 00:32:45:08
Mike Madrid
Like, that’s the affordability question is a problem. And that’s why I’m saying if you’re arguing stats in an uphill upstream battle against where reality is, that in a nutshell explains why we’re seeing some of the polling challenges that we’re seeing for the president right now. I’m not saying they aren’t correctable. I think they actually very much are. But I would say the same thing for crime is people don’t view, you know, they’re looking around their reality every day of what they’re seeing.
00:32:45:16 – 00:33:11:08
Mike Madrid
And when you start to see things in your community that don’t look right, that don’t look okay, that make you feel unsafe, that’s far more impactful than saying, well, at least we’re not. You know, as unsafe as Texas is. Right. Like, that’s not that’s not the way voter psychology works, nor should it be. And so I just the crime issue is the one issue that truly swings back and forth.
00:33:11:08 – 00:33:29:00
Mike Madrid
We go through these periods of like three strikes, lock them all up, throw them in private prisons, and then, you know, four or five, six, eight, ten years later, it’ll be like, hey, these cops are kind of out of control. Like there’s a problem here that we need to look at. Let’s put body cams on police. They’re beating people up.
00:33:29:00 – 00:33:45:17
Mike Madrid
We’re seeing that especially with people of color. There’s something’s not right here. And now I think you’re starting to swing it back where the you know, the the the knee jerk response to that is defund the police messaging that was coming out such a problem that Joe Biden had to go to the well during the state of the Union and say, no, no, no, no.
00:33:46:02 – 00:34:10:01
Mike Madrid
But you’re seeing that that shift coming back to more of a tough on crime approach. And so it’s a little bit too it’s accurate to say, you know, there has been this conflagration of news out there that shows black and brown faces looting and and showing this stuff both on social media and on and on some cable news shows that have a, you know, nefarious agenda trying to drive this stuff for sure.
00:34:10:26 – 00:34:28:08
Mike Madrid
But there’s also some rationale for it that we’ve got to be mindful of and say, wait a second, voter opinion does matter on this. Public perception really matters a lot more than facts and politics. And the perception right now is things are not good. And we’ve got to ask ourselves why. And it’s a little lazy to just say, oh, that’s just because of Fox News.
00:34:28:18 – 00:34:47:24
Mike Madrid
When you can walk out your front door and step over three or four people’s tents and saying, you know, this is this is not that big of a deal. It is a big deal. It’s a very, very big problem that California has a particularly pernicious problem with. I’m not saying it’s not everywhere, but it is exponentially greater here than anywhere else in the country.
00:34:48:05 – 00:35:29:19
Spencer Critchley
It can certainly be really bad. And it’s, you know, just in my own experience going to San Francisco, it’s terrible because San Francisco’s a wonderful city and to know it is to love it, basically. And yet it is in really serious trouble right now, I would argue in many cases, because liberals have not been enacting liberal policies. But Zach, how does it look to you in terms of addressing this crime issue and in particular addressing this big gulf between what might be demonstrable with facts and figures, but yet is in conflict either with people’s daily experience or the experience that’s created for them in the media they consume.
00:35:30:25 – 00:35:58:11
Zach Friend
Well, Spencer, as you and Mike know, I was in this space pretty intimately for a long time working for a law enforcement agency and doing a lot of national work in this space. And one thing that always struck me was how emotional crime is even when you dealt with the data. As Mike is noting, it was really irrelevant because at the end of the day, when my mom had her car broken into and I mean, they just rifled through, took some change that was in there.
00:35:58:11 – 00:36:23:23
Zach Friend
But she felt violated for years after that. I mean, her whole sense of place and security. And then if you are seeing things on the streets that you that make you feel uncomfortable or you’re you’re watching something on television that’s saying that places are being looted, it really helps create a narrative around this emotional space that’s very powerful that I think is actually much larger than crime.
00:36:23:23 – 00:37:03:03
Zach Friend
And I think that in particular the conservative media ecosystem and I respect Mike saying that that the blame on Fox News on this one, but I think that they’ve been very successful in in being able to create a picture that the general sense of place has been disrupted in modern American society crime, religion, identity. Right. These kinds of issues were I mean, were you talking about book bans and whether or not people are able to freely be religious and the crime, what that is, these are little stars in a constellation of trying to create this general narrative, Right.
00:37:03:03 – 00:37:29:11
Zach Friend
That that our way of life, whatever that means, is under attack this historic way. And immigration plays into this by the way, and our way of. And so we need to restore that sense of order. And when you are arguing on a more nuanced position, that’s very difficult place to be in. Crime, I think is one of the it actually impacts all of these elements because of that emotional resonance.
00:37:29:11 – 00:37:57:22
Zach Friend
I will say that as somebody who ran for office, right immediately preceding as a Democrat, immediately preceding my time in law enforcement, I was not dinged by functionally any of the Democrats in my district or countywide for having that background. I think this perception that everything needs to be massive reforms. I mean, not to say there isn’t systemic, I mean, there’s all these systemic issues associated with I’m not questioning that.
00:37:58:02 – 00:38:15:17
Zach Friend
But the idea that you need to have 15 propositions, removing everything from being a crime, for example, is not actually in line with what people think on the streets. And I feel like on the Democratic side, as somebody again, I mean, I wasn’t running away from my law enforcement background. I mean, I was literally the face of a local law enforcement agency.
00:38:15:17 – 00:38:36:00
Zach Friend
So I couldn’t I mean, I won overwhelmingly, right? I mean, multiple times. I think that that’s where we’re missing the point. I think that that’s a very small extrapolation of how people view the immigration issue, how they on and on and on that that people actually want both. Right? I mean, they want to be able to say that I want to feel secure in my house and I want law enforcement to be accountable.
00:38:36:06 – 00:38:53:28
Zach Friend
Right. I want to be able to have a secure border and I want a pathway for Dreamers. Right. I mean, this is not a challenging thing to message. And for whatever reason, though, we’ve created a zero sum messaging internally. Right. Here’s the irony I think the American public would understand if you were to say that we want both of these things.
00:38:53:28 – 00:39:13:12
Zach Friend
The minute you say the first part of it, though, you get attacked by a very small minority of your own party. And it actually drowns out the ability to have the second part of the discussion. But anyway, I think that the crime element is a microcosm of this broader issue, of this sense of loss of place that’s very important right now in the broader political discussion.
00:39:14:18 – 00:39:36:11
Spencer Critchley
Yeah, I’m actually thinking about this a lot right now. It’s a subject of a lot of my writing right now is the idea that essentially it feels to people like reality is breaking down, their world is falling apart because in a way it is the shared worldview we used to is breaking down. Now, the reason that worldview was shared for a long time was it was essentially a white male, Western European worldview.
00:39:36:11 – 00:39:57:24
Spencer Critchley
That was sort of the default worldview in the United States. And now, as we try to become a truly pluralistic democracy, that worldview is going to experience a lot of stress. I think I hear both of you saying, though, we have to have a worldview, we have to have some kind of shared worldview. That doesn’t mean that everybody has to sign up for the same religion or the same the same political ideology.
00:39:57:24 – 00:40:22:05
Spencer Critchley
But somehow we have to find a meeting place where that sense of community can be restored. Zach, your you wrote a book about this called On Message, which focuses on narrative, the importance of narrative, and you were just alluding to that. Do you have any thoughts I know you’ve advised a lot of big corporations and other and nonprofit organizations about this.
00:40:22:05 – 00:40:44:21
Spencer Critchley
Do you have any thoughts about how, say, the Biden campaign could apply this to trying to restore that shared sense of a community where we can come together? And I think all three of us agree that’s not going to happen by trotting out all the statistics on crime or the statistics on immigration or statistics on how, as Mike says, the economy is actually doing amazingly well.
00:40:45:02 – 00:40:48:09
Spencer Critchley
That’s going to have to be some kind of narrative, right. Zach, how do you how do you look at that?
00:40:48:19 – 00:41:07:28
Zach Friend
Well, look, as the great Ron Crochet used to say, if you remember him from the political campaign strategy world from 30 years ago, 20 years ago, you can’t govern if you don’t win. Right. And I think at the end of the day, the president needs to recognize where his coalition is to getting reelected and then then he can be the adult in the room on the governance side.
00:41:07:28 – 00:41:30:06
Zach Friend
So this this concept, I mean, to me, he still has a very strong narrative of most of the countries being an inherently decent person. And, you know, all the attacks on him otherwise are people aren’t going to vote for him anyway. I mean, like you have to be willing to discount the reality or, you know, or not discount, but just discount in your mind the fact that we don’t need to pursue folks that are never persuadable anymore.
00:41:30:07 – 00:41:49:05
Zach Friend
The idea that there is this large, independent, persuadable bloc is is a myth. And I think that where we are is is hyper locked in polarized a word, but I think we’re just hyper tribal in our position. I mean, I could ask you a question on this of what Joe Biden would have to do for me or you, Spencer, in particular, to not vote for him.
00:41:49:05 – 00:42:13:21
Zach Friend
And I actually literally can’t think of a thing in exchange for voting for Donald Trump. I mean, there’s literally nothing and that’s what people that are Donald Trump supporters think about him as evidence, right. By everything he’s done. So from a narrative perspective, I think that what he just needs to do and it’s pretty you know, it’s pretty prescriptive, I would say, is find the coalition that’s necessary to win and message the hell out of that specific coalition that’s needed.
00:42:13:21 – 00:42:45:22
Zach Friend
And that’s the narrative because he has what I think got him elected in 2020. Other than this overall sense of just people wanted and the chaos to end, was this over arching sense of decency that they felt that he could bring to the overall process. So he’s got that strong narrative. I think he’s I mean, what I would do if I was on his campaign, I would bring him to every storm ravaged location in America, no matter where it is red or blue right now, and and show his in the way that that it really plays up very well.
00:42:46:05 – 00:43:01:15
Zach Friend
I would also, on a policy side be doing the things Mike’s talking about. At the end of the day this is going to be decided by 20,000 votes in Wisconsin and 15,000 votes in Georgia and however many thousand in Arizona. And you’ve got to get there and you’ve got to figure out what it takes to actually get there.
00:43:01:21 – 00:43:27:28
Zach Friend
The idea of a Barack Obama metanarrative in this campaign is not real. I think that that we’ve lost to some degree the ability to have somebody come in and have red and blue states all uniting. I think that’s we’re not there in 2024, maybe there at some point in the future. But absent a uniting event dispenser in the country like a war or something that, you know, we’re we’re literally I mean, I’m not asking for this, but I’m saying that that tends to be you have these 911.
00:43:27:28 – 00:43:39:09
Zach Friend
So these kinds of macro level issues that actually do unite a country or break through the noise. Absent that, I think that he needs to be very prescriptive in his narrative to make sure he gets the votes that he needs to win.
00:43:39:28 – 00:43:51:04
Spencer Critchley
And that leads me to the campaigns. How do we feel about how each campaign is addressing this challenge heading towards November? Mike, what’s what’s your take on that for both campaigns?
00:43:51:13 – 00:44:22:08
Mike Madrid
I think all of your listeners ought to replay what Zach just said a few times and really kind of soak that in because I think it was very elegantly put. And I think he’s absolutely right. There’s both this tactical element, which is the question you’re asking and this broader thematic and whether that’s even possible in modern American political discourse is does the mythology of America still work when half of us don’t buy it or believe in something totally different, or we have two very different worldviews of what America is like?
00:44:22:08 – 00:44:45:07
Mike Madrid
Can we reconcile that short of a civil war? We have been at this point in our history a couple of times on the civil, of course, the most pronounced, where there’s just no reconciling the different worldviews that we have. And, you know, it devolves into into violence. And both of you guys have used the, you know, different word pluralism, I think, and tribalism.
00:44:46:17 – 00:45:13:04
Mike Madrid
One of the most fascinating things in researching this book that, you know, that I just wrote was the question, what is the difference between pluralism and tribalism? And the answer is perspective. They’re they’re defined almost exactly the same way. It’s just one is in a more optimistic, confident view of a diverse society, which is pluralism. The other one is more defensive and insular and isolationist, frightened, and that’s tribalism.
00:45:13:04 – 00:45:36:03
Mike Madrid
But they’re essentially the same word with a different perspective. And an America at this moment is is debating, are we going to be a truly pluralistic society? That is true to our founding mythology. We were never that country, by the way. Right. But but our mythology, right. There’s this arc of progress that that King and Obama talked about, like, can we be that?
00:45:36:25 – 00:46:13:20
Mike Madrid
And we we have always struggled mightily with that because the idea of America in many ways is in conflict with basic biology. And 99% of human history, which is you have a strongman, you have a dictator, you have a fascist, you have a tribal chieftain, you’ve got a leader. And this American experiment is predicated on the idea that we can kind of somehow transcend that if we’re if we all share a common mythology, a belief in the fact that we are all somehow in debt and endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, then then this contraption of our balance of powers and constitutional republic comes into play.
00:46:14:24 – 00:46:54:15
Mike Madrid
That’s all predicated on the belief that we all buy into the mythology. By the way, once that once that goes away, well, you’re kind of in America 2024. And so this is a long winded, but I will answer the question. But but but Biden actually said this and recognized this in his inaugural address where he said, we need to bring enough Americans along with us, not all Americans at this point in time is very methodical in his word choice, because his point we’re not going to convince half of half of America that is full blown MAGA and would rather tear it down and commit insurrection than see a transfer of power.
00:46:55:03 – 00:47:17:05
Mike Madrid
Stop trying to convince those people they are a threat to the republic and they need to be responded to appropriately. Because if we don’t, our our appeasement with those with those forces is going to drive us to a very dark place. What Biden’s argument is, is we need to bring enough Americans along with us to continue down this road and keep this house united.
00:47:17:18 – 00:47:51:01
Mike Madrid
And that gets to the tactical elements, which I’m convinced as long as he shares that positive, optimistic, pluralistic American mythology, there are enough Americans that are buying into that. In fact, three of the last three national elections suggest there are even enough Republicans buying into that. And as long as that continues, not a lot nine, ten, 12% of Republicans that are shifting over and saying, I’m done with the Republican Party, I don’t like the Democrats and I like Joe Biden, but I’m an American.
00:47:51:06 – 00:48:19:27
Mike Madrid
And that we can get bad passed bad policy. We can’t get past, you know, a dictator. That’s the rationale for, you know, a wide swath of Republicans or enough of a swath of Republicans. That’s enough to carry the day. And that is this moment in history, in American history, is can we continue that arc? Can we there? And to me, that vision is accomplished by being more centrist on policy, which is why I’m making this claim for for border security.
00:48:19:27 – 00:48:45:19
Mike Madrid
Look, when I look at Joe Biden, I mean, I see two things. First is I see a president who’s been more conservative to the right on oil extraction and energy extraction than any president in American history. I see a president who is united like a neoconservative. The global forces for good and been far more interventionist in foreign policy than probably any Republican in my entire life.
00:48:46:01 – 00:49:08:06
Mike Madrid
I see a president who’s to the right of Donald Trump on the border like this is one. It’s good governance, but two of four. Honestly, looking at Joe Biden, he’s as much a Reagan Republican as a Reagan Republican could get or could be. And while that may sit uncomfortable with a lot of Democrats, ride it out and look at it objectively, that’s what’s happened.
00:49:08:06 – 00:49:28:28
Spencer Critchley
At the same time. At the same time, I would argue he’s also and I’m not disputing your points there, but I think at the same time and I think this is also actually part of your point, he’s an FDR Democrat in many ways. He’s the most pro-union, pro-worker, sort of traditional blue collar Democrat, you know, actually first president in history to mark March on a picket line during the autoworkers strike.
00:49:28:28 – 00:49:34:29
Spencer Critchley
And so he’s kind of doing both of those things, also being very progressive on, you know, green investments, for example.
00:49:34:29 – 00:50:02:29
Mike Madrid
Yeah, the American public is not responding that way. But he may be gesturing, but working people are not responding to him that way. That’s a different question, though. My point is my my point. And, you know, Reagan got the UAW endorsement in 84, by the way. Right. So the UAW has moved in different directions. But my point is, we are seeing a very centrist, common sense, practical president who is saying I will issue the left when it makes sense.
00:50:03:09 – 00:50:33:15
Mike Madrid
I will attack the right when it makes sense. And I’m not afraid to go to the center when it’s the right thing to do on policy. That’s what you need in a president. That’s what you need in a president. And and the last time we had a president like this, the last time we had a president who was dismissed as, you know, an old bumbling guy who was probably not supposed to be president of the United States, but found entirely rewiring the geopolitical structure of the world was Harry Truman.
00:50:34:15 – 00:51:02:09
Mike Madrid
And Truman comes into office completely underestimate hated, stared down. The Stalinist threat in Europe, establishes Israel as a democracy in the Middle East. Obviously, you know, dropped atomic bombs in the Asian theater. And we’re witnessing right now that same constellation of events. Ukraine is the midst of a hot war. There’s an escalating conflict by design in the Middle East surrounding Israel.
00:51:02:18 – 00:51:28:08
Mike Madrid
And the South China Sea is probably going to witness some sort of aggressive action in the next 6 to 8 months or certainly before the election. Add to that, by the way, this fourth front, which is the domestic strife that is being exacerbated by our enemies. This is not organic entirely. There’s a paid, sophisticated, organized foreign attack on our homeland.
00:51:28:08 – 00:51:39:04
Mike Madrid
And that’s where Joe Biden finds himself at this moment in history. And he’s doing, I would argue, an exemplary job of balancing all of this with enormous stakes and enormous consequences.
00:51:39:11 – 00:51:48:01
Spencer Critchley
Just for clarity, you’re referring to the organized social media misinformation campaigns being directed from Moscow, essentially.
00:51:48:01 – 00:51:56:04
Mike Madrid
Yeah, that’s exactly right. And and or Beijing and or, you know, or Iran. I mean, this is this is we are under siege. We are under attack, Right?
00:51:56:05 – 00:52:01:18
Spencer Critchley
Sounds like conspiracy thinking. But it’s it’s there’s tons of evidence for this that’s impossible.
00:52:01:25 – 00:52:17:16
Mike Madrid
Just just from the basic evidence of the money that has moved, the millions that have moved to the NLRA, the millions of money that have moved through Facebook, the millions of dollars that have moved in, untraceable dollars. We know it’s to be true. So Russia interfered with our elections. There’s just no debate about that. That’s an act of war.
00:52:17:27 – 00:52:36:28
Spencer Critchley
Now, I want to I want to make sure that we have time to look at the the Trump campaign, too, Mike. And I want to ask Zack about both both campaigns as well. I think we all agree our most fervent hope is for the Trump campaign to fail miserably. But how do you see the Trump campaign performing so far?
00:52:36:28 – 00:52:56:28
Mike Madrid
Mike It’s much more sophisticated operation than it was in 2016. There’s no question about that. They they face much more significant barriers and boundaries. When I when I founded the Lincoln Project four years ago this month, all of my data and analytics were showing that there were maybe 6% of Republicans who would break away from him and not vote for him.
00:52:56:28 – 00:53:12:14
Mike Madrid
This is right as we were heading into the first impeachment, by the way, four years ago this month. Today, you start looking at the exit polling from Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina. It’s going to tell us a lot. That number is three times as big. There’s fully 15 to 20% of Republicans who are saying, no, I’m not. I won’t do it.
00:53:12:24 – 00:53:35:17
Mike Madrid
And that’s before, You know, most of the legal problems that he faces come to bear. So I think that there’s much more downward trajectory than upward for Trump. And I think the fundamentals of this race strong early lead towards a Biden reelection. Now, there are not going to be any landslide elections in this country for the foreseeable future, probably not in our lifetimes.
00:53:35:17 – 00:54:08:01
Mike Madrid
So when I say a big win, I’m talking in 1996 numbers, maybe a 2012 number where a Democratic incumbent wins by a sizable number, it’s not going to be 84. Reagan like, you know, Biden’s not going to win 49 states. He should, but we’re not. Well, that’s that’s not where we’re at. Right. And so, yes, Zach’s right. This is going to come down to largely a few hundred thousand voters, swing voters across six states that are going to be either truly persuadable, that can make a difference out of, you know, 150 million cast votes cast.
00:54:08:01 – 00:54:38:28
Mike Madrid
It’s going to come down to literally both campaigns know who these people are on probably to the name 150,000 voters across these states. And, you know, 20, 30,000 of them will make the difference in the Electoral College. So the margins are very, very narrow, as high as the stakes are. And tactically, I would say Trump walks in with some some some institutional strengths that he didn’t have and in a worse political climate than he has faced in both 16 ended 20.
00:54:39:03 – 00:54:42:12
Spencer Critchley
Zach, how about your perspective on the Biden and Trump campaigns?
00:54:43:01 – 00:54:51:09
Zach Friend
Well, first, Spencer, I’m looking forward to Mike’s creation of the bumper sticker. Ronald Reagan would vote for Joe Biden. I think that’s going to be a very popular seller online.
00:54:51:09 – 00:54:54:13
Mike Madrid
I’m going to tweet that. Yeah, today. All right.
00:54:55:13 – 00:55:15:16
Zach Friend
And we’ll make sure to connect you in with with the leadership of the Biden campaign so you can get some T-shirts made and maybe help fund fund the book as it comes out. But I think that look, I think that the Biden campaign is doing two things correctly. The first thing is, is they’re using the power of the presidency to still let him be who he is.
00:55:15:16 – 00:55:39:25
Zach Friend
I mean, he’s an impact. He’s very empathetic and he’s he’s out doing those kinds of things while they are also building up very strong teams in the key states that make us talking about as well as in particular on the digital side, where a lot of this information is going out. They’re also putting together some of the players that were very successful, both on the Obama side and the Biden side in the first campaign.
00:55:39:25 – 00:56:05:28
Zach Friend
So they’re bringing back some of the people that really do know what they’re doing in that space. I think the Trump campaign is is they just seem more adult this time around and their greatest asset is also their greatest hindrance and that’s their candidate, Right? I mean, so this is somebody who has the ability to completely control the narrative, and he knows that.
00:56:05:28 – 00:56:34:00
Zach Friend
And but he’s also somebody who can’t stay on script. I mean, if you just think about it from a fundamentals standpoint, to Mike’s point, this should be a much easier race than that. I mean, it almost seems surreal, right? I mean, if we were having this conversation about Barack Obama being indicted, impeached, and, you know, I mean, literally convicted in a civil court, at least of sexual assault and all these other things, I mean, this right before his reelection, this wouldn’t really be up for discussion.
00:56:34:00 – 00:56:53:20
Zach Friend
But the country has really shifted. And actually, fascinatingly enough, even members of my own family who are really kind of large consumers of the right wing media ecosystem, they don’t even know what I’m talking about on some of these issues. I mean, they’re not even aware I mean, legitimately, this is, though, some of these things never even happen because they’re not covered at all.
00:56:54:19 – 00:57:13:10
Zach Friend
Just like the most recent 80 whatever million dollar verdict wasn’t covered on on most of the the ecosystem. So if that’s where you’re consuming stuff and you don’t know if you truly believe it’s a witch hunt anyway, then it doesn’t really matter. I just hope I really just hope that the Biden campaign can do what they did in 2020, which is tune out the Twitter noise.
00:57:13:10 – 00:57:37:05
Zach Friend
Right. And actually focus on what really matters in a few states and not be driven by this sense that in order to win, we need to grow a coalition that’s broader or kind of an Obama coalition. By the way, the Obama coalition is also a little bit kind of romanticized. I mean, for example, Bill Clinton got more young voters in 1992 than then Obama got in 2008.
00:57:37:21 – 00:57:59:26
Zach Friend
But yet, you know, it’s all these things that we’ve created, these fantasies. But I’m ready to work, by the way. I mean, I’m ready to get back on and in some way on the campaign, because I think it matters too much. I think and I think that one thing I hope that your listeners really if they care about democracy, this is this is probably the most important election that’s going to occur in any of our lifetimes.
00:57:59:26 – 00:58:02:22
Zach Friend
And ensuring that they’re willing to do something toward it is really important.
00:58:03:05 – 00:58:34:02
Spencer Critchley
And potentially, you know, worst case, the last, last really legitimate election, if we don’t rise to the challenge that history is presenting us with right now. Yeah, I think I agree with both of you about the perspectives on both the campaigns. I’m nervous about how much more professional the Trump campaign is this time. I also just sort of have a feeling that we may see a total collapse of Trump sometime between now and Election Day.
00:58:34:02 – 00:58:59:07
Spencer Critchley
It could be a psychological collapse. I think he’s under so much psychological stress right now is as his malignant, nice, narcissistic fantasy of himself is being attacked from so many different directions, we may actually see him have some kind of collapse. I just hope and you know, this is the sort of cynical political strategist speaking here, cynical in the cause of righteousness.
00:58:59:07 – 00:59:28:09
Spencer Critchley
I would say, though, that I hope that if that happens, it’s after he gets the formal nomination of his party, because I think his party has to confront its complete moral collapse before it’s ever going to move forward. Guys, it’s great as usual, talking with you both. And I know as usual, we could go on a lot longer and I hope to continue doing that offline to get back together with you again online soon.
00:59:29:01 – 00:59:56:14
Spencer Critchley
As we wrap up, is there anything that I haven’t asked either of you about that you’d just like to make sure you you get across to two listeners who, by the way, I would say should give us hope as well. I’d like the listeners to a lot of other podcasts that try to go in-depth on issues. I think they prove the case makers making at the beginning that that there there should be an maybe a market for people who are actually hungry for substance delivered to them as if we assume they’re adults.
00:59:57:23 – 01:00:14:06
Spencer Critchley
We certainly get that with our little audience. That’s that’s the response we get to our episodes. But anyway, just briefly, in the time we have left, Mike, anything that you’d like to leave listeners with and let’s please mention the title of your book while we’re at it, because it’s coming up soon.
01:00:14:06 – 01:00:41:02
Mike Madrid
Well, yeah, it’s the book will be out in June. I think you can start preordering pretty quickly. The name of the book is The Latino Century How America’s Largest Minority is Shape is Transforming Democracy. Simon Schuster. It’ll be out on Jio in June. I’m going to come back, I think, and visit with your audience again. Spencer, Before that time, I appreciate all of what you’re doing to have these discussions because this is how changes is really made.
01:00:41:17 – 01:01:07:19
Mike Madrid
It’s understanding the gravity not only of the situation, but it’s also being able to sort of transcend that fear, understand the root causes of it, and kind of push this American experiment, this American idea forward. This is how it’s done. And so thank you for that. It’s going to be a bumpy but interesting and consequential election year. And I’m looking forward to having a conversation with both of you and with your audience as it unfolds.
01:01:08:01 – 01:01:09:26
Spencer Critchley
Thank you, Mike. Same here. And Zach.
01:01:10:24 – 01:01:27:22
Zach Friend
Just tune out the noise. I think that a lot of these ecosystems are designed to make you angry, fearful, or as some of the great Democratic strategists would say to bedwetting, lots of bedwetting are going to be going on. People are seeing the polls and they’re panicking. But that creates this inaction and this fear that can also impact elections.
01:01:27:22 – 01:01:38:27
Zach Friend
I mean, you’ve got at the end of the day, the person that gets more votes in some of these key states is going to be the president of the United States. And just think about that and what you can do to help make sure that you have a role in ensuring that’s what happens.
01:01:39:09 – 01:01:42:28
Spencer Critchley
Why is where it’s okay. Thanks again to you both very much.
01:01:42:28 – 01:01:43:14
Mike Madrid
Thanks for having us.
01:01:43:14 – 01:02:23:21
Zach Friend
Thanks, Spencer. Always a great conversation with you and Mike.