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Breaking down the stakes of the 2024 election

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This week's episode of "What's At Stake" dives deep into the high-stakes dynamics of the 2024 presidential election. Hosts Bryan DeAngelis and Ylan Mui are joined by Leigh Ann Caldwell, co-author of The Washington Post's Early 202 newsletter and political correspondent for The Washington Post. The crew explores the rematch between former President Trump and incumbent President Biden.

Beyond the horse-race coverage, the group scrutinizes the complex policy challenges facing both candidates. Leigh Ann sheds light on the obstacles Biden must overcome, including a narrowly divided Congress and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The discussion also examines Trump's enduring base of support and the pivotal role of swing voters in key battleground states.


Stepping back, the group engages in a candid examination of the media's role in covering this high-stakes political landscape. Leigh Ann shares insights into the challenges of reporting objectively in an era marked by deep partisan divides and a pervasive sense of distrust in institutions.


The episode also delves into the broader implications of the election, including the shadow of a lame-duck presidency and the potential impact of presidential appointments on the balance of power in Washington. Throughout, Ylan, Bryan, and Leigh Ann provide a nuanced and thought-provoking exploration of the critical issues at stake in the 2024 race.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to this week's episode of what's at Stake. We're your hosts. Ilan Mui, managing Director at Penta.

Speaker 2:

I'm Brian DeAndreas, Head of the Washington Office and a partner here at Penta.

Speaker 1:

This week, we're joined by Leanne Caldwell, the co-author of the early 202 newsletter and an anchor for Washington Post Live. Leanne focuses her reporting on Congress, politics and the White House, so she's busy all the time. And before joining the Post, Leanne was a correspondent at NBC News, where she covered both of President Donald Trump's impeachment trials, the January 6th attack on the Capitol and its aftermath budget battles, government showdowns, supreme Court confirmations, you name it and over the course of her career, she's also spent time at CNN, cbs News and C-SPAN. She's got a deep understanding of both policy and the political landscape, which is why we're so excited to talk to you today, leanne. Welcome. Thanks for having me. Well, I'd love to start our conversation with just what's top of mind right now, and that is, of course, the 2024 presidential election. We know that right now, it looks like Trump is leading in some of the polls over President Biden, but this is really just kind of 2020 all over again, or is it different?

Speaker 3:

Oh, that's such a great question. There's this conversation that's constantly happening among journalists and something that I talk about a lot with my colleagues, which is is this a repeat election? Is this? We have two essential incumbents who are running against each other the most immediate incumbent and then Donald Trump, who is the incumbent before Joe Biden incumbent, and then Donald Trump, who was the incumbent before Joe Biden. And how do we treat this like a normal election?

Speaker 3:

And I think that one of the challenges for the Biden campaign is they think they are treating this as if it was 2020, in the sense that they think that, because Joe Biden is not Donald Trump, that is his campaign. Of course, they're going to lean into the issues of abortion and try to sell the things that Joe Biden has done for people. He's had a very successful presidency so far and domestically, but right now, what they're struggling with is an American population, american voter set, who doesn't feel particularly good about their own, about the economic situation generally, their immigration. They're taking a lot of putting a lot of that blame on Joe Biden and you know there's still about seven, six and a half, seven months to go, but there's not that much time left and Joe Biden is behind in these critical states.

Speaker 2:

It's also a very different environment for the election. 2020 was the height of COVID. You didn't have much campaign opportunities. You know Biden did a lot of the campaign kind of from indoors, Like how does? How are they thinking about how different it is now where they are expected to be out there? And, of course, we can get into all of the other issues.

Speaker 3:

We know age and performance for really both candidates the other issues we know age and performance for really both candidates. Yeah, such a great point that, yeah, it was like it was not really much of a campaign in 2020 in the traditional sense of the retail politicking that didn't exist very much and that might have helped Joe Biden then, and now voters are expecting their candidates to be out campaigning a lot. Joe Biden did a huge swing for about a month after the State of the Union, he visited all of the swing states. He did a big fundraising tour in those big states, stopped in Texas even to fundraise, but there's no indication that that pace is going to be sustained for the next multiple months.

Speaker 3:

But on the flip side, you have Donald Trump, which also gets into a completely different environment. He's not really on the campaign trail either. He made two stops last week in two swing states, in Michigan and Wisconsin. Next week he's going to be in court where this first trial starts in New York in the hush money case. And so you have these candidates who, even though the public is going to perhaps expect a more traditional campaign their limitations might not allow a lot of campaigning, but still it's going to be expensive and it's going to be, with this media environment is so crowded, still very hard for both candidates to kind of break through and change people's minds, because many people have their minds made up already about two very well-known candidates.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, who's really undecided at this point, right? I mean, I guess I kind of feel like they're incredibly different candidates. They're incredibly well-known candidates, candidates, they are incredibly well-known candidates. So is there really a swing voter, or is it really about turnout? Is it really about who can get the base more energized? Because it seems like there's so polar opposite that I don't know how someone could have trouble making up their mind between one or the other. Maybe the question is do I just sit out and not vote for anybody? Yeah?

Speaker 3:

all of those things are like things that are being taken into account, right. I mean, for so long the Biden campaign was like look, people haven't realized yet that Donald Trump is the nominee. So once that happens, we're going to start to see people back, come back home to Democrats and you're going to start to see people's dissatisfaction with Donald Trump. But the poll you mentioned at the top of the Wall Street Journal poll showed that there's been about a month now since Donald Trump is the nominee and people are still seem are taking out their frustration with the current situation on Joe Biden, who is the current president, when you have Joe Biden losing six of the seven critical swing states. But you know, you mentioned the base. Donald Trump has great enthusiasm with the base. That's something that he has always been good at. That's something that is continuing to persist.

Speaker 3:

But where he struggles is the voters the 13, 15, even 17 percent of voters who are still voting for Nikki Haley in these early states, who don't want a Donald Trump presidency, and that is. That's not necessarily the base MAGA voter, but that is the. You know there's some independents, maybe some Democrats there, but also Republican voters who don't. You know the progressive base voters the black voters, hispanic voters Even the Wall Street Journal poll showed young voters he's having problems with.

Speaker 3:

And then, in the early primary, in the primary states, you have these voters who are dissatisfied with his, his hugging of Israel and Netanyahu and how the war in Gaza is being is being waged, and so they're taking out their frustration by voting against Joe Biden, voting for uncommitted in the early states. So you have two very, very flawed candidates who do not have widespread love and support, but who have very, who are very well known among the electorate. And so how does that electorate turn out in November? Do they turn out? It's going to be. Even though it's a campaign of two very familiar names, it's a campaign that we actually haven't seen before.

Speaker 2:

And it sort of really tees up this third party question. I mean, I completely agree with you. And to Alon's earlier point, I feel like we're fighting and we talk about it here at Penta like within the 47 yard lines of American politics, right it's.

Speaker 2:

It's really down to six states and even in those states it's like a couple clusters of suburbs we're talking about a few thousand voters and personally, I don't see a world where Trump convinces someone who doesn't like him today to like him and vote for him by the end of November, by November. And Biden you're right is going to lose all support. So the base is his problem is is this where a RFK Jr or something really is a benefit to Trump and a threat to Biden? Because you know, that's where these folks who are still voting for Nikki Haley or voting uncommitted end up just doing because they hate both traditional party candidates.

Speaker 3:

Right and then and then RFK has the name ID. He has a nostalgic Kennedy name, regardless of what he stands for. Covering RFK Jr very closely, say that the voters that show up to his events run this gamut, run the spectrum. There are some disillusioned Trump voters, there are some disillusioned Biden voters, but the conventional wisdom is that RFK Jr will hurt Biden. Who knows if that's going to be the case or not? In some polling he's polling 13, 14 percent, which is very, very significant. We haven't seen third party candidates poll that high since you know Ross Perot in the 2000 election and or 90 election. I'm sorry.

Speaker 2:

You guys can.

Speaker 3:

You guys can fact check me there before I started covering politics, but anyway, what's also different? What's different this time is that, because of these factors that we just talked about, a disillusioned electorate, high name ID with RFK Jr because of the Kennedy name the thing that's different is that the Biden campaign is taking this extremely seriously. The DNC has four dedicated staffers, including one of the top like comms people in the country, focused specifically on third party candidates. You have a super PAC that was just formed of former Biden aides who are going to spend money to define and, to, you know, attack third party candidates, and so all of this. So they know that this is a problem and they know that this is a candidates, and so all of this. So they know that this is a problem and they know that this is a threat, and so they're not just going to let it happen.

Speaker 3:

There's some people who say that the 2016 campaign was handed to Trump because of very weak third party candidates. Gary Hart, the former New Mexico governor, in the three Pennsylvania, wisconsin, michigan in 2016, he won over half a million votes Right. Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election in those three states by 67,000 votes, and so there is, you know people who don't want to see a repeat of what happened in 2016. For those people who do blame the third party candidate, of course there are many, many other factors, but they're just taking it very seriously and you know the convention very seriously and you know the convention. One more thing I'll say is the conventional wisdom is also that most people go back to their home bases when it comes time to vote. They actually don't vote third party but again, given these dynamics, we don't know what's going to happen this year.

Speaker 1:

That's all super fascinating. I know that you spend a lot of time not just focused on, obviously, the presidential election, but you're walking in the halls of Congress almost every day when they're in session. What do you think happens in the House and in the Senate? May not even be speaker by the time we get to the November election. Based on some of the reporting you guys have done so far, so you know what do those dynamics look like and how does that relate to what happens in the White House?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so it's becoming very real. So to remind people the House, there's only a two-seat majority in the House right now. After special elections and all the things, they might have a four-seat majority by November the Republicans. So it's anyone's game in the House. It's a complete toss-up. But I will say there's a lot of angst among Republicans who know that they have very little to show voters of their accomplishments over the past year and a half. It's been the least effective Congress in at least 50 years. As far as legislation has passed. It's been stalemated, controversy, chaos. They could barely keep a speaker of the House, and so there's a lot of worry that Republicans will lose the majority.

Speaker 3:

Democrats think that this is going to be a good election for them. Because of that, because of abortion, they think that the presidential will help them. And then over in the Senate, you know it's a very good chance that the Republicans will win control of the Senate. You have Joe Manchin who decided not to run for reelection, and so you already assuming Republicans are going to, republicans are going to pick up that seat. So you have a everything stay status quo, a 50 50 Senate, and then who decides? The White House will determine control of the Senate, but the Republican, the Democrats are, you know, having to hold a handful of seats red seats, purple seats in the Senate. So it's going to be a very tall order for Democrats.

Speaker 3:

What is the unknown is how the presidential is going to impact these down ballot races. You know Biden is underwater in a lot of these states. That's evidence in Nevada where just last week the Cook Political Report moved the Senate race from lean Democrat to toss up because of Joe Biden's standing in the state of Nevada. So there's going to be a lot of down ballot impact on how voters think of the presidential. It's not very common it's becoming more and more uncommon for people to ticket split in these competitive districts and states to boost Biden, to outperform Biden and for their success to help Biden, which is usually not how it works. Usually it's the top of the ticket helps them. So they're thinking about it in a much different way because they're very aware of how much Biden is struggling in some of these states at this point.

Speaker 1:

That's so interesting. We are going to leave it there for right now and take a quick break. I'm Ilan Mui here with co-host Brian DeAngelis and with Washington Post reporter Leanne Caldwell, and you're listening to what's at Stake.

Speaker 4:

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Speaker 2:

Welcome back to what's at Stake. I'm your host, brian DeAngelis, here with my co-host, iwan Moy and Leanne Caldwell of the Washington Post. Leanne, I want to pick up where we left off there and kind of get your take on both how the media will approach this historic election and what's likely to happen. We were talking before the break about, you know, what's going to happen in the Senate and the House and it's widely unknown. But I think what is known is that, no matter what happens, we're going to elect a pretty unpopular president. That's a lame duck. We're going to have a House and a Senate that, even if they flip very, very close margins how do you kind of cover the campaign when it's likely we're going to have two to four years of pretty low productivity coming out of the federal government again?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, how many more government shutdowns can you cover Leah, you could have a world record?

Speaker 3:

Can we just like copy and paste our stories and change the names from yeah Right.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and change the names from yeah, right, yeah. So I think what's interesting about the next term is, you know, you talk about a lame duck president, which is so fascinating. I think that, with Donald Trump, though, I think that he has big plans and if you were to get a second term, he has said he now knows what he didn't do because he didn't really know how to work the system as much in the first term. He now knows to appoint people who don't stop him from what he wants to do, and that is leading to lots of fears of authoritarianism of you know putting. You know setting the Constitution aside in many instances and kind of doing what he wants in many instances and kind of doing what he wants.

Speaker 3:

But there are currently think tanks and institutes full of Donald Trump people who are planning for a second term, and so I think that you know, whatever the president is able or unable to do will largely depend on Congress, which gets back to the question that you originally asked, which is we don't know what's going to happen. But if, if you know, donald Trump wins and he has a big majority in the House and the Senate like, yeah, he's, could very well do a lot, and same with Joe Biden. But the thing is, the chances that each the House and the Senate are going to have big majorities lots of cushion for the few defectors is probably not going to happen. We're probably going to continue this teeter of just a few votes either way, and so I don't know. I just, yeah, the dynamics are going to be so, so fascinating.

Speaker 3:

And how do you cover it? You cover based on, I mean, what they say that they're going to do and the people around them say they're going to do. Like I mentioned, these think tanky people for the America First Institute and others who are crafting these plans for Donald Trump more traditional way, he laid out what he wants to do in his budget that he released earlier this year, which he has big plans for. You know all sorts of things housing and child care and domestic. You know all sorts of domestic issues, but you know it's kind of a wish list. But again, if he has big majorities then maybe he can put some of that through.

Speaker 2:

Yeah To your point of Trump feeling like he's got lessons learned now and even Biden being a creature of Washington. Do you does the media go deeper into agencies and executive power at that point? I mean, do you kind of make that I don't want to say calculation? It's not that you guys won't cover Congress, but knowing that they'll have to pull levers to get their agenda across, that's deeper into the executive branch than congressional side. Do you start looking deeper and deeper into those kind of actors and players coming into not just secretary positions, but even deeper into those kind of actors and players coming into not just secretary positions but even deeper into the administration?

Speaker 3:

I think, absolutely. I mean, I think that you know we have people who cover the agencies and I think that that's definitely going to have to be their job. You have. You know, there's ideas out there on the Trump side of making it easier to fire federal employees, which obviously makes it easier for him to put in the people he wants into those positions. He's tried some of that in his first term in the sense of not firing people, but he had a hold on hiring the federal government. It came more from a perspective of wanting a smaller federal government, but now, for this term, it seems like it's more from a perspective of I need people in there to do what I want to do, and so I think the agency reporting, which can be very you know, the agencies move slowly, so it's like not a thankless task, so so I think it's going to be absolutely crucially important, especially if that is the way that a president tries to sidestep a Congress sidestep a Congress.

Speaker 1:

You know, one of the things that was unique about the 2016 campaign and President Trump's potentially first term was the relationship that he had with the media, and you know he turned the media into the story right by some of the comments he made about individual reporters, about media organizations, and really attacking and questioning the credibility and the institution of the media industry and of individuals in particular. So when you think about that potentially returning, how do you, how do you, how do you brace yourself for that in an environment that can be potentially very antagonistic? How do you win the trust of your readers?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think that's the question of the day and I think that the hard part is.

Speaker 3:

So we as journalists continue to report, in the's view of the press, that people are now completely siloed into their media coverage and what they listen to and what they watch, and that is absolutely a tactic that he has effectively used to keep people angry, fearful and not fully informed of the larger picture.

Speaker 3:

And so we can do what we can continue to do is do our jobs in the best way that we know how to do those jobs and try to reach as many people as possible.

Speaker 3:

But the challenge is is when people are there's also, people also have their own responsibility to stay informed in a in a holistic and as complete of a way as possible, but that just doesn't happen and it doesn't really, you know, on. You know it happens on the right and it happens on the left that people want to be reinforced their and so I think that it's a huge challenge for the media and it's a huge challenge for society and it impacts it's not even just the media. We're seeing this in our school system and how children are educated in completely different ways depending on where you live and what state and what school district you're in. And when you have a public that is not informed of the same, does not agree on the same facts, it makes it very difficult to do, but we can just continue to do what we do Well, what we do Well, what you do has expanded so greatly.

Speaker 1:

I mean, we think about when we were probably both starting off as reporters. You know your career seemed very stair-step. You write a story for the newspaper that gets printed the next day and it shows up on people's doorstep and that's just not how the news is disseminated anymore and that's just not how reporting works anymore. You guys have to be across, invisible and doing your reporting across so many different platforms. Can you talk a little bit about how the role of a reporter has changed over time?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's so true. I mean, I started as a radio reporter and I would do my little four minute, three minute radio story every day and it would be on the radio and that's. I wouldn't have to think about it until the next day. Right, twitter did not exist when I started, but now, yeah, the media landscape is so crowded, like people have social media and like you know their phones and everything these algorithms are, reinforce your own beliefs. And so, even if you want to see other news, like what shows up in your social media feed is what you already believe. Like everything is just reinforcing of our own, of our own biases, um, to keep us entertained and to keep us engaged. And so now, as journalists, we are completely responsible. For you know you don't have to, but you try to have some news now is considered big news, like. So you have to be on top of the incremental to also be part, to also be able to tell the big picture story.

Speaker 3:

Um, you know, I write a newsletter, which seems like you know, it could be a step backwards in journalism that I left television to write a newsletter, but the fact that the number of people who read my newsletter, they get it in their inbox every single day is actually seems like a very antiquated way to read news, but is a growing way to disseminate news where people don't have to search for it. It comes to them. They open their email and that's news. You know, washington Post has reporters on TikTok and Instagram stories and trying to reach as many people as possible. It's yeah, it's expensive and a lot more people are needed to do it at a time when the media industry is completely contracting.

Speaker 2:

And I wanted to ask about that last point, because I do. We've spent a lot of time talking about how news now just comes to you. You know, I'm still a Washington Post subscriber, but you know my kids don't sit down and flip through the newspaper, right, everything hits them on TikTok. Or even, if I'm being honest, most of my day I start reading you know, five, six, even more newsletters. I'm sure there's some I'm missing. I promise the early 202 is in there. How do you, you know, miss the early 202 is in there. How do you, you know, what are you doing on the early 202? Or what are you kind of learning from readers to kind of continue to break out and be one of the kind of trusted sources and most read sources with so much competition these days?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's a great question. I think that I think that's where journalism hasn't changed, in the sense that you have to still offer people something, and for me, I believe that is well-sourced journalism and a deep understanding of the topics we're covering. Of the topics I'm we're covering, um and so the content. I believe, like you know, the content still matters, um, the way it is disseminated has changed and will continue to evolve, and how to reach people is, um, you know, is always a question of how to reach more and more people. But as long as we continue to do good journalism, I think that it stands out, but also not being afraid to zig left when everyone's zigging right and like do coverage that is different, or a different take, or a different angle, or a completely different topic? Um and so, um, yeah, I just, I just like, come back to the content matters, um, and being super committed to, to like the craft, really, even if only half the population is reading it, your, your side, they're a very engaged.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, Absolutely. Leanne. Thank you so much for taking some time to talk to us today. We really do appreciate it To our listeners. Remember to like and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts and follow us on X at PentaGRP and LinkedIn at PentaGroup. Again, I'm your host, Ilan, here with co-host Brian and, as always, thanks for listening to what's At Stake.