Friday Morning Politics: Polling, Presidential Campaigns, and More

Tiffany Hanssen: It is The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hanssen, host here in the WNYC newsroom filling in for Brian today. On today's show, we are observing Veterans Day one day early with a conversation about adverse mental and physical health effects experienced by troops in the US military campaign against the Islamic State. We hope to hear from vets. Plus billionaire Mets owner Steve Cohen has thrown his hat in the ring to try to build a casino, really, actually a giant entertainment complex with a casino right next to Citi Field. Crain's New York reporter Nick Garber will talk politics with us and push back and how likely that casino is.

We'll end today's show with a subject that is sure to elicit some strong feelings, subway etiquette. Yes, stories of smoking on the train, eating fragrant food on the subway, more train transgressions. We know you have them. We'll talk about what The New York Times found out about manners in the subway after COVID, but first, this week, we had the second Republican primary debate, the first since the start of the war in Israel and Gaza. Also this week, 22 Democrats including several New Yorkers and one rep from New Jersey joined fellow Republicans in the house in a vote to censure Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib over comments she made about Israel, plus newly minted Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, is staring at the potential of a government shutdown if the stopgap spending bill can't get passed before Thanksgiving.

Oh, and there was an election this week. We'll talk about all of the developments from the week with Susan Page, the Washington Bureau chief at USA TODAY. She joins us now for our Friday politics roundup. Hi, Susan.

Susan Page: Hey, Tiffany, it's great to be with you.

Tiffany Hanssen: Thanks for being here. Of course, Susan and I would love to hear from you listeners. Let's talk about this week in politics, election results, challenges on the horizon for Speaker Mike Johnson, widening party divisions. You can call us at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Susan, it has been a busy week, so I figure let's just go Monday to Friday. We'll start with Monday. There was a poll that came out on Monday, New York Times Sienna College poll that basically showed Biden down by anywhere from 4-10 points in some key swing states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada. Got a lot of people talking, including someone we'll get to in a minute, David Axelrod, but first, let's just talk about this poll. What is it that has, I guess, particularly Democrats hand-wringing over this, aside from just the obvious?

Susan Page: Right. Well, of course, there is the obvious that in five of six swing states, all states that Joe Biden carried last time around, he was trailing Donald Trump, but for folks in the White House, what was more alarming were when you looked at the cross tabs and you saw President Biden's current weakness among groups that are part of his coalition that includes voters under 35, voters of color. Donald Trump has scored gains among Hispanic voters and among Black voters. That's what gives some serious concern. It really shook up Democrats in a big way. When we get to the next day of the week, if Tuesday hadn't been such a good day for Democrats, we'd still be talking about that poll.

Tiffany Hanssen: Even though we are a year out at this point, it still elicited such a big response. I guess I'm just wondering we're so far out, does it really show us anything?

Susan Page: Sure. It doesn't predict what will happen in the election. We make a mistake when we look at polls and think they tell us what's going to happen in the future, but they tell us what's happening right now. It tells us what people are feeling in their own lives at the moment, and so, for instance, even though the White House makes the case that there's some good economic news, that the jobs numbers continue to be very strong, that inflation is still a problem, but it's moderated, Americans are telling us in these polls that they don't feel that in their daily lives. That is probably the issue that is hurting President Biden the most when people ask about things like his approval rating.

Presidents in the past have had weak approval ratings one year before their reelection and then they go on to win reelection. President Obama would be an example of that, but there is some special concern about Joe Biden, and some of that centers just around his age.

Tiffany Hanssen: One more question about this poll before I let it go. We mentioned the hand-wringing that's happening among Democrats about this, what appears to be a little bit of a lackluster performance so far out from the election among Democrats and among those voters you mentioned, under 35 Hispanic voters, Black voters. Is there anything else besides hand-wringing going on? What I'm asking is hand-wringing is one thing, but addressing the problem head-on and understanding why these voters are leaving and then addressing that head-on, is that happening?

Susan Page: Well, so there are two ways you could address this situation. One is you could make renewed efforts, new strategies to convince those voters that you're doing a good job and they should support you. The other thing you could do is change who's running for the office. That's what has caused some particular turbulence in Democratic waters.

David Axelrod, whose name you mentioned, is one of the top strategists for President Obama, a very senior Democratic strategist, and one who is often not spoken in the most favorable possible way about Joe Biden, made comments questioning whether Biden should reconsider his decision to run again.

Now, Axelrod didn't say Democrats should oust Biden. They said, "Biden needs to make a decision about whether it's the right thing for the country." Man, that caused Axelrod some significant turbulence in the Democratic Party, and later in the week, he tried to walk that back a bit, saying he wasn't suggesting Biden not running again. That was a hard walk back to make because it's pretty clear that's exactly what Axelrod was saying.

Tiffany Hanssen: Well, right. I can tell you exactly what he said. This is a quote, "If he continues to run, he will be the nominee of the Democratic Party. What he needs to decide is whether that is wise, whether it is in his best interest or the country's." Yes, it's pretty straightforward.

Susan Page: [laughs] It's hard to say there isn't a message to Joe Biden in those comments, and in fairness to Axelrod, that is a conversation senior Democrats, including some who very much respect Joe Biden and what he's done as president, that's a conversation they're having. They're just not having it out loud.

Tiffany Hanssen: Well, I think it also points to, as you mentioned or you alluded to, this rift between the Obama Camp and the Biden Camp. I'm wondering, does this signal that surrogates for Biden during this upcoming election season will not include people from the Obama campaign, the Obama administration?

Susan Page: Well, there are people from the Obama administration in really senior roles in the Biden administration, and some of Biden's supporters were people who also served in the Obama administration, but President Obama has mostly tried to stay out of Joe Biden's way, I think, as president. I think Obama was a little skeptical about Biden running for president at all last time around.

It's not the first time we've seen a little friction between the guy who was in charge and the guy who succeeded him. That said, Obama did something this week that was really problematic for Joe Biden. I think it's really the first time he's done something like that since Biden was sworn in. And that is he talked in a very direct way on a podcast about the Israel-Hamas conflict. That has caused a real rift in the Democratic Party. Joe Biden to stand very firmly with on the side of Israel, although he has also talked about the need for a pause in the fighting there and the admission of humanitarian aid and allowing refugees to leave, but Obama in this podcast talked about there's blood on all our hands.

He talked about the Palestinian plight in a way that Biden has not, and that gave Democrats who disagree with Biden's approach to the Middle East some comfort and some ammunition in a way that was not helpful to this White House.

Tiffany Hanssen: Is it a comment ultimately though that will affect a large number of swing voters or even registered democratic voters in general? Not just people who are plugged in, but actual voters who are considering whether or not to vote Biden in again.

Susan Page: Actual voters, we should think about them more often.

Tiffany Hanssen: Right?

[laughter]

Susan Page: Because they're the ones that actually determine who gets elected. The thing is, if you want to be president, you got to do both things. You've got to get your core supporters really [unintelligible 00:09:41] up to turn out to work for you, and you've got to reach out and persuade swing voters who sometimes vote one way, sometimes vote the other, that you're the person they should back. That's why being president and being reelected is a difficult thing to do. Not everybody succeeds in doing because you have to do both things and you have to do them at once and sometimes those two goals are at cross purposes.

Tiffany Hanssen: Listener, if you are a swing voter, are you a Democratic voter under the age of 35? Are you a Black voter, Latino voter who's become disenchanted with the Democratic Party? We would love to hear from you this morning. We have our politics roundup today with Susan Page, Washington Bureau Chief at USA TODAY, and we'd love to have you in the conversation. You can call or you can text us at 212-433-9692.

Susan, let's move on to Tuesday. You mentioned the rift building between the Obama camp and the Biden Camp over these comments about Obama's comments on the Israel-Hamas war. Rashida Tlaib, progressive Democrat from Michigan, on Tuesday was censured by The House over comments that she made about the war. My question is-- and it's largely seen, I would argue, as a reprimand for her, I'm wondering does she see it that way and/or does she see it rather as a way to coalesce her supporters around her viewpoint?

Susan Page: Tiffany, I [unintelligible 00:11:32] think that's a question I can answer because you have to be inside the Congresswoman's head to understand how she saw it. I will say I watched her speech on The House floor, which was quite emotional, and she seemed to take this very seriously and to be heard about it. She did not strike me as someone who was using this as some big rallying cry to get people behind her. She talked with some passion about what's happening with the Palestinian. She's of course, the only Palestinian American serving in Congress. She said that Palestinians are not disposable people. At times she seemed to be crying.

I think she took this pretty seriously, getting censured by Congress, people throw that around at the moment all the time, but it's in fact, historically been really rare. I think this is only the 25th time in our history that Congress has voted to censure a member. It looked to me that she took this to heart and was distressed that this was happening. Of course, it divided her own party. A lot of votes we've seen in the House are almost entirely along party lines. In this case, 22 Democrats voted to censure her including, as you said, three from New York. 22 of her Democratic colleagues voted to censure her. Most of them stood with her, but that's not insignificant.

Tiffany Hanssen: We talk about that group of Democrats that is not insignificant from her party. Dan Goldman from New York's 10th, Pat Ryan from the 18th, Ritchie Torres from the 15th and in New Jersey, Josh Gottheimer. I'm wondering if there is some thread that you can pull that ties that small group of Democrats together in their vote against her.

Susan Page: Democrats historically have stood quite staunchly behind Israel and the Jewish people. That's been an important characteristic also in New York and New Jersey. When you think about what's happening in the Middle East, you hear those members no one to forget what happened on October 7th. You also had this rising thread among the most liberal members of Congress, which also includes people who come from New York and New Jersey, who think that US policy toward the region has been out of whack and there needs to be more consideration of the Palestinians even while still supporting Israel. That's the tension that is dividing the Democratic Party. There are issues that divide Republicans like access to abortion, but this is now becoming a big issue that divides Democrats and in a really passionate way. This is an issue in which the people who care about it, care about it really a lot.

Tiffany Hanssen: I want to talk a little bit about those ongoing and increasingly widening divisions. We got a text here, 35-year-old disenfranchised Democrat here. "Nothing new. I didn't want to vote for Hillary, but I did. I didn't want to vote for Biden, but I did, and probably will again, for the sake of not having an extremist right-wing politician in the White House." Lindsay in Brooklyn, who says, for her, "Biden does not inspire me," she said. We talked about that New York Times Siena poll, how much of that is a reflection of whether or not Joe Biden is just basically inspiring voters? For whatever you may think about Donald Trump, he fires up his base.

Susan Page: Well, Donald Trump not only fires up his base, he fires up the Democratic base.

Tiffany Hanssen: Well, that's true.

Susan Page: He is a bipartisan person to fire up voters. What ties together the text you have and also the message from Lindsay, and this is something we see in our polling across the whole country, is that many voters, a majority of voters are not happy with having a choice between Trump and Biden again. The Trump-Biden rematch is an unpopular one even with most Democrats and most Republicans. People would like to see some different faces at the top of that ticket.

Looks extremely likely that we will have this rematch. The question is, how does that sort out? Because the last election was a close one, so was the one before that where it closely divided nation, likely to be a close election next year. How does the fact that it's a rematch with a candidate on the Republican side who has a really fired-up core, but has trouble reaching swing voters and a Democratic incumbent who has demonstrated broad appeal to the electorate, but is not firing up his core voters? How does that sort out? That's the issue we're going to be wrestling with, I suspect, for the next year.

Tiffany Hanssen: Susan, I want to bring a listener in here. Ronan in Brooklyn. Good morning, Ronan. Welcome to WNYC.

Ronan: Hey, good morning.

Tiffany Hanssen: How are you?

Ronan: Thanks for taking my call.

Tiffany Hanssen: What's on your mind?

Ronan: I'm 26 years old. I'm a Democrat, always voted Democrat except for a couple statewides in California. I actually used to work on political campaigns. What I have to say is it's feeling very familiar. This idea that we have it choice, it's been handed down to us as voters. We're expected to fall in line and just help the Democrat get across finish line. I might do it, probably will, depending on my options, but I don't feel optimistic about my fellow 26-year-olds, the people of my age range. I think just bad for democracy when we don't get the opportunity to weigh in in a real way about who our nominee is and we're just expected to be good, do the right thing, vote for the Democrat that someone else picked for you. I think it's egotistical on Joe Biden's part that he ran again as a very old man.

Tiffany Hanssen: Ronan, thanks. Susan--

Susan Page: Ronan, before you leave, can we ask him, who would you like to have run? Who would you like to be voting for?

Tiffany Hanssen: Oh, good question.

Ronan: Yes. Well, I would love to see Gretchen Whitmer. I'd love to see Pete Buttigieg. I'd love maybe even see Pritzker on the ballot. I think he's done a pretty good job in Illinois. Someone who's younger, somebody who has not just been associated with the old guard of Democratic Party for such a long time. I always like to see a governor in there. I think this Joe Biden is too old. Even, although I actually think he's been a pretty good president, that's not really relevant as we can see to how voters perceive somebody. It's just good to freshen things up and I think it takes a politician of true humility to be able to say it's time for to step aside, even if I think I've done a good job. Disappointed to see Joe Biden didn't have the humility.

Tiffany Hanssen: Ronan, thanks for the call. Susan, interesting. I also want to get to something that Ronan touched on, which was the apathy, I guess I could call it. One of the things we heard about this election on Tuesday was the low turnout was maybe because people are fed up with the system, they're just disenchanted. We're hearing that, we heard that from Ronan. Is that a real concern not just for what is arguably usually a low-turnout election? Would that hold into next year and is it real?

Susan Page: There's another issue that is of great concern to the White House and could well shape this race next year. That is the possibility of serious third-party candidacy, independent candidacy. Ronan said, when I asked Ronan who he would like to be voting for, he named a couple Democrats like Gretchen Whitmer the Governor of Michigan, or Pete Buttigieg the Secretary of Transportation. He might have some other options next year. He might have Joe Manchin leading the no-labels ticket if that ended up happening. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is appealing to some-- I suspect Ronan would not be particularly drawn to anything but the Kennedy name, not the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. positions on things, he may be running. Jill Stein has announced that she's going to be running again as a Green Party candidate. There are Hillary Clinton supporters who believe Jill Stein's independent candidacy on the green ticket cost Hillary Clinton the presidency in 2016. We may have these multiple serious-- Cornel West, another person who says he is going to run an independent campaign.

What we see is this makes the math really complicated. It doesn't all hurt Biden. The early polling indicates that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hurts Trump more than Biden, but Cornel West and Jill Stein hurt Biden more than Trump. It means that there are states that we don't think of as swing states that maybe become more like a swing state. It means swing states could be tipped one way or another. That's the big risk of a candidate who doesn't generate a lot of enthusiasm within some in this party, is if they have someplace else to go and it looks like there'll be several other places they can go if we have these independent candidates on the ballot.

Tiffany Hanssen: Talk about hand-wringing. [laughs]

Susan Page: Hand-wringing are us here in Washington.

Tiffany Hanssen: Before we take a quick break, I want to talk with Katie in Norwalk, Connecticut. Good morning, Katie. Welcome to The Brian Lehrer Show.

Katie: Hi.

Tiffany Hanssen: You are a lifelong Democrat.

Katie: I'm a lifelong-- I've never not voted for a Democrat. I'm 35 now so I'm at the top of the whatever you would call the youth vote. For me, what I'm seeing and what I'm hearing and how I'm feeling is that literally most of the people I know who are-- I'm not an Arab American. I'm not Muslim American. I'm not Palestinian American. I'm actually Catholic. I'm from Connecticut. I grew up here and we are so disillusioned because of how the Israel and Gaza conflict has been handled.

We just feel like this is the biggest failure we've ever seen. I personally will not be voting for Joe Biden. I will not be voting for my senator who's a Democrat or my congressman. I've told them that and made that very clear. I don't think the Democrats are taking seriously how big of a deal this is to some of their main base.

Tiffany Hanssen: Susan, to your point, Katie is making your point, that the war between Israel and Hamas is going to be an issue for Democrats in terms of dividing voters.

Susan Page: I think Katie is right that Democrats, including those around Biden, have been surprised by the extent of concern there is for Palestinians as Israel hits back after the events of October 7th. I think this has emerged in American politics, especially among younger and more liberal voters, as something they want the United States to respond to.

Now, the administration officials say that they understand this and they're working on this and they're encouraging Israel to have a ceasefire or a pause in fighting to change their tactics and adjust their goals to accommodate what we see in American public opinion and public opinion in other places as well.

I think US officials are warning the Israelis that they risk losing the support of allies around the world if they don't adjust what they are doing, what we're all seeing now happening on the Gaza Strip. Israel, of course, got hit in a brutal way on October 7th, and that has been in some ways, I think, a hard case to make to Israeli officials. We've seen Secretary of State Blinken make repeated trips to the Middle East very involved in what's going on there. Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, very involved on the phones every day, every hour, and I think they hope that this somehow works out.

We have the administration officials talking now about re-embracing a two-state solution there, talking about having the Palestinian authority take over control of Gaza when the fighting ends. We see the administration working on this, and maybe things will turn around in a way that by a year from now, Katie will feel okay about voting for Democrats again. I do think this has been something of a surprise to many officials.

Tiffany Hanssen: We had Governor Hochul make a trip to Israel. We have, coming up this weekend, Chris Christie announced his visit. I want to touch on some of that, but I'm going to take a quick break here, Susan. We're talking with Susan Page, Washington Bureau chief at USA Today. It's our weekly weekend politics roundup. I'm Tiffany Hanssen in for Brian Lehrer today and we'll be back in just a minute.

MUSIC - Marden Hill: Hijack

Tiffany Hanssen: It's The Brian Lehrer Show. I'm Tiffany Hanssen in for Brian today. My guest is USA TODAY Washington Bureau chief Susan Page. Susan and I making our way very slowly at this point through this week in politics. Susan, before we leave the election, we talked about how this poll that came out from The New York Times and Siena where a year out isn't really something we should be even talking about at this point. We're so far out from the election.

Could the same thing really might be able to be said about these "wins" for Democrats that happened during Tuesday's election? Incumbent Governor Andy Beshear rewon reelection in Kentucky. Democrats in Virginia basically dealing a bit of a blow to Governor Glenn Youngkin ensuring that he didn't get control of the state legislature. Ohio voters, of course, passing a constitutional amendment ensuring access to abortion. A lot of Democrats saying, "Hey, this is great news for us. This is something that we can piggyback right into 2024." Is that true?

Susan Page: Yes. By the way, Tiffany, we're only up to Tuesday.

[laughter]

Tiffany Hanssen: Right. I know, right?

Susan Page: That's the kind of week it's been. I think what was meaningful about Tuesday was it just showed the enormous resilience and power that the issue of access to abortion continues to have, even in red states, even Ohio, which is a state that democrats no longer even campaign for president, even in Ohio, by close to 2:1, not quite there by double digits, voters voted to enshrine in the state constitution a right to abortion. That shows how out of step Republicans[unintelligible 00:27:09].

We talk about Democrats having a problem when it comes to policy on the Mid-East, well, Republicans have a problem dividing their coalition on the issue of abortion and we see they have not figured out a way to square that circle. You mentioned Glenn Youngkin. He got not just a little setback Tuesday, he saw his presidential ambitions go up in a puff of smoke. He had fashioned what he said was a compromised position on abortion, a ban at 15 weeks. That did fail to convince voters, they lost.

Now Democrats won united control of the state legislature. That means that Youngkin will have more trouble than before in enacting his agenda on anything from abortion to parental rights and other issue on which he's campaigned. There's somebody who was talked about as a savior for the Republican Party, a possible alternative to Donald Trump, and that is not the conversation that we began having about Glenn Youngkin on Wednesday morning. This is just an issue with possibilities because Democrats are in step with where the American public is and Republicans are not.

Now they've got a year to work this out to figure out what they think, but for Republicans, the problem is a big part of their base cares a lot about opposing abortion rights. How do they hold onto those evangelical Christians and other social conservatives while also convincing swing voters in states in places like New York suburbs that they hear and understand what their views are on this issue?

Tiffany Hanssen: I'm wondering if we can extrapolate out from this that issue voters are attracted to a party that can say not only what they're against, but what they're for. This is something that the Democrats have been criticized for. "Nobody knows what we're for," is what a lot of Democrats have come out and said. "We need to say what we're for." One of the things that a Democrat can come out now and say is, and have, but maybe to more effectiveness now is that, "We're going to take this abortion issue and we're going to take it to the polls." Is that accurate?

Susan Page: Well, Tiffany, if you lived in the DC areas as I do, you'd see that every ad that ran by a Democrat for a Virginia legislative race was about abortion. If you lived in Kentucky, where I don't, where you saw Andy Beshear, a Democrat, running for reelection there. He talked on the stump about things like roads and bridges and the Internet, but his ads focused front and center on abortion rights, including an emotional ad, a touching ad toward the end that had a young woman talking about her experience with sexual abuse by her stepfather, I think, when she was 12 years old. She was in the front row of the audience at his victory celebration, and he acknowledged her-- Hadley is her name, from the stage and thanked her for her role. I think Democrats in those places this year, it was pretty clear the issue that they thought was going to be most important through the electoral prospects, and that was abortion. There had been some thought that this was a test about whether abortion, which played a big role in the midterms a year ago, whether it still had that potency, and it still does.

Tiffany Hanssen: I want to take a call, Susan, to John-- Let's go to John in Hartsdale. Good morning, John. Welcome to Brian Lehrer.

John: Hey, good morning. Thank you so much for taking my call. I just want to make a comment about the general tone of a lot of the Democratic field and the opposition to Biden. I'm 61. I've voted Democrat every year since I was eligible to vote for all the major elections. I've never seen or experienced a more competent and efficient administration, going back to Nixon. I remember every single administration.

I, of course, campaigned for Obama myself. I was in Philadelphia on the day that he got elected. I was extremely disappointed with the way he handled his first two years with a majority in all the chambers and trying to play patty-cake with the Republicans, but never mind that. Everybody's looking for excitement. We all would love to have the reincarnation of John F. Kennedy show up. That seems like what everybody wants. Right?

The fact is Biden has been extraordinarily effective in getting things done in the most difficult and challenging political climate that I have ever seen. We came off of four years of a nightmare show that we're all still traumatized by, and if we don't get ourselves together behind the one person who is actually doing the best job over the last 50 years, we're going to be in trouble. Whether it's Cornel West or Jill Stein or anybody else, they're all interesting candidates, but if they think that their candidacy is going to move us forward and out of the Trump era, then we're in for a big, big surprise.

Tiffany Hanssen: Susan, John's views are not shared by a lot of Democrats.

Susan Page: John, the White House is on line two. They would like to talk to you about cutting an ad. Because John is making in an interesting, articulate, and compelling way, exactly the argument that White House officials make when they talk about President Biden and his administration about the fact that he's been competent and surefooted, that he's gotten big pieces of legislation through Congress. Not all of them, but the largest climate change legislation in our history, for instance, and that it is dangerous to, for instance, have no-labels field a bipartisan ticket, which is what they're talking about. That is exactly the argument the White House is making.

We've got a year to find out if that works. If people are persuaded to overlook concerns about Biden's age and look at his performance and decide, "Yes, he's done a good job as president." Also, as John did to look at the alternative. One of Joe Biden's favorite phrases is, "Don't compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative." Which means, don't compare me to the president you would most like to have in your dreams. Compare me to the other guy who is running and decide who you prefer.

Tiffany Hanssen: Well, to that point, let's switch gears now and we'll move to Wednesday, Susan.

[laughter]

Tiffany Hanssen: The Republican debate was on Wednesday night, and I should say former President Trump's competing rally was also Wednesday night. There's always the polls that come out that say the winners and losers of the debate were and if you follow those and if you believe those, Nikki Haley seems to be on top, not really showing much movement. Staying lower to middle in terms of performance, Chris Christie, Rick Scott.

What I'm just wondering is, if we switch gears and now talk about the Republicans, how are you viewing-- Let's take Trump out of it altogether, just among the people on the debate stage. How are you viewing Haley's chances?

Susan Page: Tiffany, here's the problem. How do you take Trump off the debate stage?

Tiffany Hanssen: I know you were going to say that. [chuckles]

Susan Page: If I had to write an analysis of the debate, which is honestly just a terrible task to have to make instant sense of it. My bottom line was did anything-- Trump is the almost certain nominee, did anything happen on the debate stage that makes that less likely? I think the answer to that is no. I think that's why Trump has chosen not to participate in the first three debates and says he won't participate in the fourth one in Alabama next month.

In that way, you talk about the winners and losers. Well, the winner is Donald Trump of that debate. Now, if you do try to take Trump off the stage-- I do think Nikki Haley has been the breakout star of the Republican field, and on all three debates, she's shown how comfortable she is, how she has managed to learn how to attack an opponent without coming across as quite as obnoxious as perhaps somebody else on that stage came across as.

I think that she has done herself a lot of good because there's more than one reason why you might run for president. One is because you want to be president, you want to get the nominee, but maybe you want to set yourself up for the next campaign. If you look at that slightly broader picture, I think Nikki Haley has done herself a lot of good.

Tiffany Hanssen: Someone that former President Trump said was not looking at the wider picture is Iowa's governor. [chuckles] He basically said, "Well, that person doesn't want to do anything past being Iowa's governor," in his world. Of course, Iowa governor came out and endorsed DeSantis. What was the point there? Did it really do anything for DeSantis? Didn't really do much for the governor in terms of getting some decent press for herself out of it?

Susan Page: Well, here's the thing. We talk about everything in terms of the tactics. Maybe Kim Reynolds really thinks DeSantis would be best president, and he staked his claim in Iowa. If he doesn't do really well in Iowa, he doesn't have a next state to go to. After starting out as the alternative to Donald Trump, he is no longer seen that way. Kim Reynolds is extraordinarily popular in Iowa. It is a little unusual for an Iowa governor to endorse a candidate. Not unheard of, but typically not what they do. The fact that she endorsed him, I don't know if it helps him a lot, but it certainly doesn't hurt him.

It's a seal of approval that presumably is somewhat helpful, and given the downside of endorsing anybody, I assume it's because she actually wants him to win the Iowa caucuses. They're now two months away. We should be modest about what we know for sure. We don't know for sure what's going to happen in Iowa, and we especially don't know for sure what will happen in New Hampshire, a state that has given us upsets more than once in this presidential process. I'm looking forward, as we said earlier in this hour, to letting voters actually express their own opinions by how they cast their ballots.

Tiffany Hanssen: Just one last quick question [chuckles] about the debate. Why TikTok just brought everybody, brought the claws out?

Susan Page: [chuckles] I think TikTok was the vehicle for what seems to be some ill feeling between Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley. That was a pretty remarkable exchange. I don't know that I've ever in a mainstream debate like this heard where one candidate called the other scum. I think that may be a red line. We have people here who watch what's trending on social media during these debates, and they said one of the things that was trending was, "What is the definition of scum?"

Tiffany Hanssen: Oh, interesting. All right. I'm going to leave that there, and move to Thursday. Before we run out of time, Susan, you mentioned Joe Manchin. Of course, Joe Manchin announced on Thursday that he's not seeking re-election. Are they rumors at this point that he might be mounting his own third-party presidential bid?

Susan Page: Yes, absolutely. His statement certainly left that possibility open. He said he was going to travel the country and see if there was interest in a movement from the middle. That certainly sounded like he was open to considering this prospect.

Tiffany Hanssen: You also mentioned Jill Stein. RFK is our third-- Is this a moment for a third-party candidate to finally bust through?

Susan Page: There's two forces here. One is the dissatisfaction with the two major parties. I don't think it's ever been as high as it is now, the number of Americans who identify themselves as independents. On the other hand, the fierce polarization may make people vote against the side they're really against, and that may help Republicans get Republican voters to come home and Democrats to get Democratic voters to come home because they are so much voting against whoever's on the other [unintelligible 00:40:04] that aisle.

Tiffany Hanssen: Voting against actually gets people to the polls as much as voting for?

Susan Page: Sometimes more.

Tiffany Hanssen: Sometimes more. All right, Susan, there's a good place to leave it. USA TODAY Washington Bureau chief Susan Page. Susan, thanks so much for your time today. We appreciate it.

Susan Page: Tiffany, thank you.

 

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