Lynn Vavrek (3:00)

So calcification sounds like polarization, but we think about it as polarization, polarization plus. And it makes politics feel stuck. Like calcification in the bones. It's rigid.

Jon Favreau (3:12)

I figured Lynn could give us her take on the state of the new race for president with 80 days left. Not based on polls or media coverage or how the campaigns are doing each day, but on her analysis of our calcified electorate and what might persuade voters.

Dan Pfeiffer (3:25)

To break out of it.

Jon Favreau (3:28)

You'll hear my conversation with Lynn next. Then I figured we'd end the show by getting our marching orders from the Harris Walls campaign itself. So I asked one of its newest members to chat, an old friend who's managed two of the three successful Democratic presidential campaigns of this century. Senior Harris campaign advisor, David Plouffe. I'm Jon Favreau. Welcome to the wilderness. Lynn Vavrik. Welcome back to the wilderness.

Lynn Vavrek (4:02)

Thank you so much.

Jon Favreau (4:03)

We had you on the first episode.

Dan Pfeiffer (4:05)

Where you talked about how the electorate isn't just polarized, but calcified, which means it's roughly 50, 50 between two parties divided by identity inflected issues. And that's made the last several elections feel especially close, heated, and of course, as we saw in 2020, even violent. And we talked about in April whether there are any developments that could break us out of those calcified elections that since then we've had one candidate who was convicted of a felony, won a debate, survived an assassination attempt, and is.

Jon Favreau (4:36)

Still getting roughly the same share of.

Dan Pfeiffer (4:38)

The vote that he had before. Then we had another candidate who lost.

Jon Favreau (4:43)

The debate so badly that he ultimately.

Dan Pfeiffer (4:45)

Had to drop out of the race and pass the baton to the first black woman vice president, who is now leading the race for president by a few points with less than a hundred days to go.

Lynn Vavrek (4:54)

I wish I were a movie producer and you were pitching to me because I would greenlight this immediately. This is great.

Dan Pfeiffer (4:59)

We'd be like, no one's gonna believe.

Jon Favreau (5:02)

So I wanted to have you back.

Dan Pfeiffer (5:03)

To know, like, how you're making sense of all this and whether you think breaking out of calcification seems any more likely.

Lynn Vavrek (5:10)

Now, I will tell you that when all of those events started to happen, the little voice in my head said, oh, boy, here comes the biggest test of calcification we've seen.

Dan Pfeiffer (5:22)

It's one of my first thoughts as well. I love that.

Lynn Vavrek (5:24)

Okay. And then as the Days passed, and the weeks rolled on, and crazier things, unexpected things started to happen. And as you just said, there was not a lot of movement in the polls. And to be fair, nobody expected big movement, but there really wasn't a lot. I thought, wow, okay. You know, calcification is really holding up well here, and this is sort of the best evidence that we could have ever dreamed up. So fast forward now to three weeks later, however many weeks. It's been some short number of days since all of this started, and you are starting to see movement and in the polls. But don't confuse that with, oh, we're moving out of calcification, because what is the movement doing? The movement is taking us back to where we thought we would be initially. So we're back to, man, this is gonna be a close race.

Dan Pfeiffer (6:22)

So what did you initially think about the political impact of Biden stepping aside? Like, what was your reaction when it first happened?

Lynn Vavrek (6:30)

Well, much like I think everyone else, I was surprised. And then you sort of have to work through, you know, wow, in my lifetime, I didn't think I'd see anything like, okay, so you get through all of that.

Dan Pfeiffer (6:42)

Right, Right.

Lynn Vavrek (6:42)

But from, you know, a research point of view, I thought that a couple of things could happen. My first thought was, boy, everybody thinks this is fundamentally gonna change the race, and maybe it changes the veneer, but it doesn't change the landscape of American politics. And so I wondered how long it was going to take for people to appreciate that.

Dan Pfeiffer (7:08)

Yeah.

Lynn Vavrek (7:08)

And I think that I sort of like to talk about it this way. Let's say we've all been to a really nice party, and, you know, the music's good and the company's good and the food is good and you're having a great time, or vacations are like this. And you think, wow, if my life was like this, this would be great. But you know that when you leave the party or you leave the vacation, you're going back to your same old life. And that's a little bit what's happening for Democrats. We've been at a really nice party, but the underlying structure of this contest hasn't changed for voters in terms of what kind of worlds are on offer. But I wonder if Harrison Walls can keep the party going. You know, this like, we are the joyful freedom ticket and turn up the music, get on the bus, and just ride this thing into early voting, which.

Dan Pfeiffer (8:02)

Starts mid September in some pretty key states.

Lynn Vavrek (8:05)

Yeah. And I mean, wow, what a trick.

Dan Pfeiffer (8:07)

For people who might not know what did you make of Kamala Harris rise in the polls. Right. For context, I think that it was a close race, and then the debate happened, and then it wasn't a close race. And then now it's back to being a close race. And, you know, she's probably a little further ahead now than Biden was even before the debate. Not much, but a little bit. So, like, what do you make of the moving polls?

Lynn Vavrek (8:32)

Yeah, I think that two things are important to keep in mind. The first is that a lot of those people who moved away from Biden after that debate performance, they were gonna come back and don't think they.

Jon Favreau (8:47)

And what makes you think they were gonna come back?

Lynn Vavrek (8:48)

Well, we've seen it in other elections, and the sort of best parallel is 2012. There were two moments like this in 2012, and we know this because we had actual panel data. We were interviewing the same people over and over and over again. And mitt Romney said, 47% of Americans are never gonna vote for me. And he lost. Vote share. Now, those people didn't go to Barack Obama. They went to, I'm undecided. I can't say I'm gonna vote for this guy anymore. I'm undecided. But then maybe a week or so later, Barack Obama had a bad debate performance. And those people, the same people who had moved away from Romney just prior, they moved back to Romney, and a bunch of people who were for Obama moved into undecided. But Obama went on. He had great. He's Barack Obama, and they came back to him. And I think the same thing was likely to happen here. These people who moved away from Biden after the debate, they didn't go to Donald Trump.

David Plouffe (9:45)

They.

Lynn Vavrek (9:45)

They moved into, maybe I'll stay home. That's a big thing that's happening this cycle. Or I don't know who I'm gonna vote for. They were probably going to come back if things equilibrated. They have come back to Kamala Harris and some other people who are already in those categories have come back. So it's different because the candidate is her. But it isn't like those people were never gonna come back.

Dan Pfeiffer (10:13)

Well, that was my next question, which is the big difference, of course, in 2012, is it's a new candidate, right?

Lynn Vavrek (10:18)

Yeah.

Dan Pfeiffer (10:18)

But you know, something that I've wondered for a while now, even before this switch happened, is in a very calcified electorate, how much does an entirely new candidate matter?

David Plouffe (10:29)

Yeah.

Dan Pfeiffer (10:29)

I mean, obviously that remains to be seen, but how are you thinking about that?

Lynn Vavrek (10:32)

My guess is not very much. But we cannot confuse that with. It's not pivotal. So in this environment where the parties want to build very different worlds, and most people understand they want to build very different worlds, the set of people who are voting in elections pretty much know which world they prefer. Okay, so when I say, like, you can swap out that candidate and it's not going to make much of a difference if it makes a point, if it makes two points, like these elections are very, very close, that point or two that could be pivotal, that could change the outcome. That could mean a different party is in the White House. That could mean the world is different. So small, but potentially pivotal.

Dan Pfeiffer (11:20)

Yeah. The new development or the potentially new development is. You had mentioned big thing that was happening this cycle is some people saying.

Jon Favreau (11:26)

I might not vote at all.

Dan Pfeiffer (11:28)

So now Kamala Harris is the nominee. There is all this excitement, enthusiasm. The crowds are, like, reminiscent of what we saw in 2008. Haven't seen it since then. How much does that matter in terms of the final outcome? When you think about the opportunity that the Harris Walls campaign has to maybe bring some new people into the electorate who weren't just bummed out by Biden's debate performance, it might come back, but, like, hadn't even thought about being involved because they were like, oh, this is a rerun of Trump Biden, and I just don't want to.

Lynn Vavrek (12:03)

I think it's important. And anytime you can bring more of your 100% guaranteed your voters into the electorate, that's a dollar worth spending, because there's no chance that person's not voting for you. So if you can spend that dollar to get a guaranteed voter out, you should do that. It's a lot more efficient than spending that dollar to try to get that persuadable voter who you think is 60, 40 for you, but you're just not sure because there's some chance they vote for the other guy. So I think this enthusiasm and just the whole party is for sure going to attract more people than the rerun of Trump Biden would have attracted.

Dan Pfeiffer (12:44)

It matters more than just good vibes and good feelings.

Lynn Vavrek (12:47)

Yeah. I mean, you know, political scientists always want to say, like, you know, stop judging the popularity of these candidates by crowd size. You know, even before Trump was obsessed with crowd size. And that's true. It is not a substitute for hard quantitative measurements of people's preferences.

Dan Pfeiffer (13:05)

Right.

Lynn Vavrek (13:05)

But you don't have to have gone to get your PhD in Political Science to understand that. When you see all of those people getting excited about this duo, that that means that there's more enthusiasm out there and that more people who thought maybe they were going to sit out this election may be reconsidering that decision.

Dan Pfeiffer (13:28)

You were talking about how voters who participate in elections sort of understand there are two different worlds that they're choosing between, and they have a pretty good idea of that. Now we have a new candidate. We have a very compressed period. How do you think voters are making decisions about Harris, or at least making impressions of Harris based on four weeks of campaigning so far?

Lynn Vavrek (13:53)

Well, part of this is really simple. So for the 40 whatever percent of the electorate who consider themselves to be some kind of Democrat, those people knew they liked her already because she's a Democrat. So it's not so much that, like, everyone's evaluating her anew. A little bit of this is people's party identifications are going to color their impression. So Democrats, as soon as it was clear she was the one, were all in. So really, the question is, what about these independents?

Dan Pfeiffer (14:24)

People who are undecided either about who they're voting for or whether they're voting at all.

Lynn Vavrek (14:28)

Yes, exactly. And this is a group of people that I've been particularly interested in for a while, and in this cycle in particular. And independents who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 really have moved away from saying they're gonna vote for him or Kamala Harris in this cycle. And so I'm really interested in how many of these people they can get back. And so I think that if you were gonna script a rollout, this is a pretty good one. It's hard for me to even think of, like, ooh, let's erase that day and substitute in a different one. I think they've done a tremendous job of looking like they know what they're doing, which is huge. Competence is huge. There haven't been many missteps, and they've ended up with this really great kind of freedom message that I just love, because that is typically the purview of the other side.

Dan Pfeiffer (15:26)

I was going to ask you about this because last time we spoke, we sort of ended the conversation talking about Biden's focus on democracy.

Lynn Vavrek (15:34)

Yes.

Dan Pfeiffer (15:35)

And I know you know, and we've gone back and forth on this, and I remember you saying, like, you weren't quite sure about whether a democracy message was going to bring anyone over who wasn't already with Biden.

Lynn Vavrek (15:49)

I'm sure that's a kind paraphrasing of what I said. Thank you.

Dan Pfeiffer (15:53)

Freedom seems like it may be different or what do you think?

Lynn Vavrek (15:57)

I think it's definitely different. Even the walls line in Minnesota, there's a golden rule. Mind your own damn business. And we let people make their choices. And even if we don't make the same. I mean, if you read to me, if we run a political quiz show and you read a candidate said these lines, are they a Democrat or a Republican in the last 80 years?

David Plouffe (16:17)

Right.

Lynn Vavrek (16:18)

We'd all say, oh, that's a Republican. Keep government out of our lives. Less government. I know better what's right for my community than the government does. And I just think it's been like this amazing feat that Kamala Harris, they've managed to co opt that exact argument and say, I want you to make choices about what goes on in your community, in your household, in your life, with your body. That's you. The government shouldn't be telling you, let's get government out of those decisions. And so back to your original question. What does that mean for these independents and undecided voters? I think that is a pretty powerful attention getter.

Dan Pfeiffer (16:57)

Yeah.

Lynn Vavrek (16:58)

Because they have heard the same thing from Democratic candidates for a while now.

David Plouffe (17:04)

Right.

Lynn Vavrek (17:04)

Democracy is at risk. When we're the United States of America, there's nothing we can't do. Right. This has been eight years of this, and this is a different idea. And I think that's good. It all works together with this turn the page kind of moment that I thought was a huge opportunity when Biden said he wasn't gonna seek the nomination. And I in some ways think that. I wasn't sure Walls was the right turn the page candidate, but it's working out well.

Dan Pfeiffer (17:38)

Yeah, no, I felt the same way. So about Trump, I mentioned that he sort of has stayed steady in terms of vote share, even with all that's happened. His favorability rating is higher at this point than it was in even 2016 or 2020. Is this evidence of Trump having a high floor and a low ceiling? Like, what do you think's going on with Trump right now?

Lynn Vavrek (18:01)

You know, I mean, like, I think most people understand who he is and what he wants to do, and it's the same reason why. I mean, it seems like ancient history, but, like, remember when he was convicted of the 34? It feels like 10 years ago, but in that moment, everyone was like, wow, why haven't his numbers moved? And it's all baked in now, the assassination attempt. I think that's a moment. And you know, and that's sort of a moment for the country. It's not political. It's wow. Like, this is a threat to America. And so I think there was, you know, you can see in the polling afterward, more people say they're gonna vote for him. Now this is all conflated with like the debate had just happened and there's a lot going on.

Dan Pfeiffer (18:53)

A lot going on in a three week period.

Lynn Vavrek (18:54)

Yes, but so I don't. Obviously that's not baked in, but this is all part and parcel of calcification. At the end of the day, sometime between now and election day, unless the Harris campaign can keep the party going, there will be a moment when the curtain gets pulled back and we're like, oh, wait, we're still fighting over what's gonna happen on the border. Who gets to call themselves an American. You know, do women get to play, you know, who gets to play on women's sports teams and all these things that they're very difficult topics because they're person based.

Dan Pfeiffer (19:39)

Right.

Lynn Vavrek (19:39)

And I feel like we're just. The reason I compare it to a party is we're getting a little bit, as voters, a little bit of a reprieve from having to do the hard work, from having to think about the really difficult questions. And like my friends like to say to me, well, can't we just agree to disagree? And that's always like what you say to your kids, right? When you're trying to teach them how to be grown, like, you can agree to disagree. And so I feel like they think that they're being grown ups when they say it. And I'm like, no, you know, someone has to sit down and write a policy.

US Cellular Prepaid Announcer (20:13)

Right?

Lynn Vavrek (20:13)

Who do you get to marry?

Dan Pfeiffer (20:15)

Right?

Lynn Vavrek (20:15)

You can't be married on Monday and Tuesday, not on Wednesday and Thursday and on Friday. Only if you want to be. We can't avoid.

Dan Pfeiffer (20:22)

You can't get abortion one day and then get an abortion another day.

David Plouffe (20:25)

Right?

Lynn Vavrek (20:25)

There has to be a public policy. This is hard work. And I think we've as voters had a little bit of a break from the stress of that.

Dan Pfeiffer (20:34)

I talked to Anat Shankar Osorio and Mike Pothorser last episode. They have made the case for a couple years now that the most powerful force in politics has been opposition to maga Trump, and that ultimately Democrats need to make this election about MAGA in order to bring that coalition together in 2024. That, that won in 2020. That was clearly the Biden strategy.

Jon Favreau (21:00)

What do you think of that now?

Dan Pfeiffer (21:02)

Because the convention's next week and she's.

Jon Favreau (21:06)

Going to introduce hers, reintroduce herself to.

Dan Pfeiffer (21:08)

The country on her terms, she's got.

Jon Favreau (21:09)

To define herself for people.

Dan Pfeiffer (21:10)

She's got to talk about her agenda. But then there's also this anti Maga stuff. How do you see that?

Lynn Vavrek (21:16)

Yeah, I think, again, like, the real magic trick would be to take that set of people, and that's really what those guys were talking about. There's this majority of people who don't want MAGA in the White House. So the real trick would be to get those set of people, but instead of identifying the cutting line that separates them from everyone else as being MAGA and anti Maga. And if you could get them to think of themselves in a different way as a group, but in a different.

Dan Pfeiffer (21:47)

Way, not as an opposition to.

Lynn Vavrek (21:50)

Yeah, the freedom fighters. I don't know. I'm making this up as we go along. Right. But, like, some way that is more centered on pretty clearly. If you had told me that, like, you know, Kamala Harris is gonna end up as the candidate and people are gonna be talking about how joyful her campaign is, and a lot of that's gonna be driven by her smile and her laugh, I would have been like, what planet are you on? But that is literally what is happening. And I love that they're sort of leaning into it. And so you take that politics doesn't have to feel divisive all the time and take that joyfulness, and you just create a group of those people that is more focused on her vision of this contest instead of Trump's vision. When you're talking in your opponent's terms, you're losing.

David Plouffe (22:39)

Yeah.

Lynn Vavrek (22:39)

And so let's not be Richard Nixon fighting John F. Kennedy by sneering like, oh, we've all been to new frontiers. I mean, did we all know that was not the right answer? Right. Yes. So make the group something about their vision.

Dan Pfeiffer (22:56)

I find this so interesting because I obviously come from this tradition, having worked for Obama, but then in the ensuing years, learned about sort of the power of negative partisanship, and that so much of so many of these elections, and especially our calcified electorate, is driven by negative partisanship.

Jon Favreau (23:16)

And I'm trying to figure out how.

Dan Pfeiffer (23:17)

To square that with suddenly, again we have this. Let's build this sort of large coalition that is focused on something positive and exciting and what we're for and not what we're against.

Lynn Vavrek (23:28)

You know, I think that the secret is elites matter. And, yes, like, negative partisanship, which, just so everyone's tracking, means that you really don't like the other side. You like your side a lot, and you really don't like the other side. And that has been increasing over time. 100% for sure. There's lots of great work on this in political science. Okay. But that gets exacerbated in 2016, when Trump becomes the leader of the Republican Party and then moving through the COVID years into 2020 through that campaign. And then you've got Joe Biden, the leader of the Democratic Party, saying that those guys, they are putting democracy on the ballot, they're dangerous. And that's negative. Right. So the messages, this is like, you know, we've known this for a long time. The messages that elites, whether that's candidates or media are sending, really do trickle down and affect voters. And so if she wants to go out there and be positive and hope, change, freedom, joy, turn the page. Yeah. That is going to have an effect on people. And so don't underestimate the power of political entrepreneurship and political leadership.

Dan Pfeiffer (24:45)

Honestly, that's good to know, because otherwise it does some of the calcification stuff feels like we're just all stuck and it's less of an election than like a census. And you just who you are and who you voted for, that's what's going on.

Lynn Vavrek (24:58)

I just, I want to caution you there, because calcification doesn't have to be dire. You know, there's some, just a few good things. People are paying attention. They know what the parties stand for, they know what they want, so they can identify which party they'd rather see, which world they'd rather have built. Calcification doesn't mean the same party's going to win every election. I mean, we've seen that's not true. It just means the elections are going to be close. And so that's. That's all. That's all. It doesn't have to mean that we're fighting. It doesn't have to be negative or confrontational. You know, yes, the worlds are more different than they were in the 1980s, 90s and early 2000s, but that doesn't mean that it has to be as divisive as it's been.

Dan Pfeiffer (25:41)

Well, calcification, aside from last question, Democrats have been talking, media pundits, everyone, since I think maybe 2012. Could this be election where the fever breaks and the fever being sort of the more radical faction of the Republican Party that has now taken over much of the party, and we saw that with Trump, and it's really Trump's party. If Trump is defeated this time, under these circumstances, after this many years, do you see any possibility that maybe the Fever breaks or that we get out of this.

Lynn Vavrek (26:17)

I think that it isn't impossible, but it may be unlikely. But it does depend a little bit on what the outcome of 2024 looks like. So candidates want to win elections, and the best way to do that is to have a strategy that, you know, has won elections in the past. So if they lose and they lose very narrowly, there will probably be. Maybe it will be J.D. vance, maybe it won't be depending on how sort of beat up he gets.

Dan Pfeiffer (26:44)

Right.

Lynn Vavrek (26:45)

It's interesting to think vice presidential nominees who are not on winning tickets, they don't really re emerge. Yeah, true, but maybe it'll be him. But if they lose very narrowly, there will be someone else who comes with the same. I'm the heir apparent to this. Maybe It'll be Don Jr. Who knows? If they lose by a bigger margin, then the next candidate who wants to win that election on the Republican ticket has to say, people aren't really buying what we're selling. Maybe we need a pivot. But if it's close, people are kind of buying what we're selling. If we can tweak the rules a little bit, if we can get out a few more voters in two states, we can win. So it's a little too soon to tell.

Dan Pfeiffer (27:32)

And again, it's to your point. The candidates matter, the elites matter, the message they send matters.

Lynn Vavrek (27:37)

I think it all matters.

Dan Pfeiffer (27:38)

And winning big in this calcified election, very hard. Doesn't have to be that many points.

Lynn Vavrek (27:43)

Well, that's true. That's true. Three points. You know, again, the Electoral college is really what we're talking about. So what is that? Margin of votes for electoral college wins.

Dan Pfeiffer (27:54)

Right.

Lynn Vavrek (27:54)

And it's been, you know, 77,000 in 2016, whatever it was, 44,000 in 2020, you know, it's been getting smaller and smaller.

Dan Pfeiffer (28:03)

Okay. Lynn Vavrek, thank you as always for coming by and sort of giving us the bigger picture where we are right now. Who knows what'll happen between now and next time we talk?

Lynn Vavrek (28:15)

I mean, oh my gosh.

Dan Pfeiffer (28:16)

Not gonna predict anything.

Lynn Vavrek (28:17)

Craziness.

Dan Pfeiffer (28:18)

Thank you for making us smarter.

Lynn Vavrek (28:19)

As always, thanks so much for.

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Jon Favreau (30:01)

Okay, we got the lay of the land from Lyn, and now we'll hear about what we have to do to win this thing from former Obama campaign manager and current Harris senior advisor, David Plouffe.

Dan Pfeiffer (30:11)

David Plouff, welcome back to the wilderness.

David Plouffe (30:13)

Jon Favreau, it's always good to be with you.

Jon Favreau (30:16)

Last time you were on, I asked.

Dan Pfeiffer (30:18)

You to scare the shit out of our listeners about the dangers of a second Trump term. You're now trying to prevent that from happening by coming out of campaign retirement. You've recently joined the Harris Walls campaign as senior advisor for the path to 270 and strategy. Tell me about what that role entails.

Jon Favreau (30:35)

And how they got you to upend.

Dan Pfeiffer (30:38)

Your life and join the campaign.

David Plouffe (30:41)

Well, John, basically what it means is I do whatever Jen o', Malley Dillon and Kamala Harris ask me to do. So, you know, it's a campaign. You've been there, I have. So I think there's a lot of excitement, which is amazing. Obviously, the race now, I think looks much more winnable than it did a few weeks ago. We're back to multiple pathways to 270, but it's a really abbreviated timeframe, so she's got to introduce herself what the race is about, her ideas, and obviously continue to make the case about how dangerous a Trump second term would be. So one thing that's interesting, you remember this from the early Obama days. Sometimes when you're faced with just a crushing calendar, it really quickens decision making, and I think that's useful. There's just a lot to get done. So we, with the best evidence and data we have and best instincts, are making a bunch of decision. But Jen did a great job of getting that campaign ready for general election. Obviously, enormously challenging to have a switch at the top of the ticket, but they've kind of dealt with it without missing a beat. I've been spending a bunch of time in Wilmington. I'm super impressed by the team. And here we are with a chance to keep Trump out of the Oval Office and elect somebody who I think is a really exciting candidate, would be a great president.

Jon Favreau (31:46)

Yeah, I was gonna ask, I mean.

Dan Pfeiffer (31:47)

You'Ve been on so many campaigns.

Jon Favreau (31:48)

What's it been like launching a campaign.

Dan Pfeiffer (31:51)

With an entirely new candidate with 100 days to go? Like, what are some things that would surprise people about that?

David Plouffe (31:58)

Well, I think there's a lot of great things about it. Right. People are very enthusiastic. I think a lot of people are signing up, and they say, hey, you know what? I can do everything I can for three months, maybe not for two years. Obviously, I think the reality was there was a lot of voters, Democrats, Independents, Republicans, not thrilled about the rematch, and she's a breath of fresh air. So there's a lot of excitement. Obviously, you've. You've got to get ads out the door. You have to understand where the electorate is, which is going to be slightly different in a Harris Trump race than Biden Trump. Obviously, you've got to get new signs. You got a whole Democratic convention that has to be kind of rewired to some extent. Trump did one debate. Now we got to get him to do at least one more debate. So it's like multiple fire hoses aimed at you every day. That means you got to prioritize what really matters. What do we really have to dig into, what do we don't. But again, it's a great campaign team. And it's a mixture of people who were there in 20, some people who worked with us back in 12 and 8. You've got a lot of younger people who are bringing their great ideas. Some of the best ideas are the people who might. This might be their first or second campaign. That's always the blessings of these things, as you know. And obviously, the American people and people all around the country, I mean, the volunteer signups in Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, every battleground state's been enormous. And to win a race like that, that Matters. I mean, you gotta have people out there talking to people, registering voters, sharing content on social media. The book you guys wrote is a great guide for how to. And I think it's manageable for people to say, you know what, I'm going to really give a little more extra time in this than I might normally do because it's only 90 days.

Dan Pfeiffer (33:26)

That makes sense.

David Plouffe (33:27)

Hell, by the time this airs, it'll be down to 80, you know, 80 days. So it's an achievable time for people to say, okay, I'm going to take stock of my life and figure out how many hours can I give every week to this.

Dan Pfeiffer (33:37)

That's great. Let's talk about the path to 270.

Jon Favreau (33:40)

How has your thinking about the map.

Dan Pfeiffer (33:41)

Changed from when Biden was the nominee to now that Harris is the nominee?

David Plouffe (33:46)

Well, listen, I think at the end of the day's post debate, the Biden campaign really was down to Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and the 2nd congressional district of Nebraska. And obviously the numbers didn't look good in those places. But you probably had a plausible path. Maybe you had to have a great debate. Trump makes some mistakes, the economy recovers a little bit, you have a chance. But Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia and Nevada, I think were off the table. They're back on the table in a big way. So she can win the blue wall in Nebraska, too, and win. I think she can win Nevada and Georgia. I think North Carolina is going to be really close because, you know, you and I went through these races to win some of these states, you're going to have to really max out turnout, max out vote share amongst young voters, Hispanic voters, Asian voters, black voters, suburban women who have become a base for us, but also do well enough with swing suburban voters and keep Trump's margins down in some exorbitant and rural areas. And so far, the data suggests that he can do that. There hasn't been a collapse from Biden where that was probably his strongest. Rural areas, seniors over 65. Even when he was losing the race, he was doing probably what you'd like to see there or close to it. So that's my view, is you don't want to come down to having make every shot to win the presidency. You want to be able to say, you know what, maybe at two to three of the states we target, we won't win, but we can still win. But I think there's a credible pathway in all of them. I think Nevada's changed quite a bit. Georgia and North Carolina, I think are dead even. Right now, Arizona as well. And obviously, I think in the blue wall states, we've seen a pretty dramatic change in those states from where it was. So it puts a lot of pressure on Trump. And so, hey, before the switch, Trump was running around Minnesota and New Hampshire and New Mexico and talking about expanding the map. I think those days are over. I think we're back to the core seven and that really important congressional district in Nebraska. And of course, listen, I mean, Florida, Texas, there are states that are close, but a presidential campaign has to be absolutely sure they can win it. And nobody's better than Jen o' Malley Dillon about being careful about it. She says if you're going to go into a state, you got to be all in. And that was certainly always my view back head fakes aren't worth shit. You got to basically be all in. You don't have a second to waste or a person to waste or a dollar to waste. So I think that's the battlefield for now.

Dan Pfeiffer (35:57)

It seems like XI has consolidated a lot of the traditional Democratic constituencies that had been flirting with either third party or staying home or in some cases Trump, black voters, Latino voters, younger voters. Seems like she's doing obviously much better with those groups than Biden.

Jon Favreau (36:16)

Do you think she has more work to do with older voters or non.

Dan Pfeiffer (36:19)

College white voters than Biden did? I know you said that her numbers so far seem like they're holding rural voters, but is that, are those groups of voters that you guys are gonna be focusing on particularly or.

David Plouffe (36:29)

Well, John, as you know, it's a hour to hour, day to day evaluation of that. Right. And it will shift from day to day, week to week. But I would say as it relates to base voters, yes, huge improvement, but more room to grow. So that's gotta be a huge focus. Like keeping Donald Trump to 8 to 10% with a black vote is a lot different than him getting 15 to 16 getting that Hispanic vote share. And when we think about like the black vote, Hispanic vote, any cohort, what it matters is the battleground state. So when you look at the national Hispanic vote, that's gonna be a little bit skewed because of the Cuban vote down in Florida. But the Hispanic vote in these battleground states, you know, if you can get north of 60, I mean, hell, it looked like Trump a month ago might be able to win the Hispanic vote in those states. I think she can build a margin and the same thing with younger voters. So I think there's still room to grow. So that's incredibly important. I think with swing voters as we traditionally understand them, which are of every race, every ethnicity, but true swing voters. I think her being a new candidate, kind of this turn the page moment will help with them. She's got a lot of work to close the sale, but I think she's got a better opening. And then we're just gonna have to watch those rural voters again. That was one of the reasons Biden won, as you know, in 20, was he outperformed Hillary in the Erie counties of the world, which is a big county, but also some of those small counties, just to use Pennsylvania as an example. I mean, the way to think about it, Donald Trump's gonna win most rural counties and if he wins them by 34 rather than 44, it's a big difference. And listen, some of those counties, in 16, he was winning like 85, 15. You really wanna prevent those because those add up. So that's the thing I always tell people, the math to win a battleground state is just super complicated. And when you're feeling good about one segment of the electorate, then you begin to get concerned about another. You're never all green. I never was anyway. There's always something that could go a little bit better on the dashboard. But I think the early signs are quite good. And we clearly, as it's stated in polls, have an enthusiasm gap. I think that's true in terms of fundraising, definitely true in terms of volunteer activity, where I think Commonwealth will have a huge advantage over Trump. So. But we have big moments left. Conventional be a big moment. That first debate will be a big moment. Trump is super lazy this time. I mean, you remember in 16 he was out there humping it. Yeah, he wasn't 20 in part, cuz he didn't give a shit about COVID So he was reckless, but his schedule is remarkably lethargic. And there's two things, maybe both. One, he may just not have the stamina or his team really believes he hurts himself when he's in a state. But then I'm not sure you do these press conferences, so that is a huge advantage. I still believe that candidate on ground. You know, Kamala and Tim Wallace are going to be on a bus over this weekend heading into the convention. They're going to be all over the battleground states. That matters, particularly for a candidate like her, who a lot of voters, they might know her name and that's it. So it's an opportunity to introduce your biography, your values and the contrast in this race. So to me that's an important ingredient here as we think about these battleground states is I think we're going to have a stronger ground effort with human beings on the ground, like talking to their neighbors. But I also think it looks like we're going to have more candidates. And listen, J.D. vance is running around at a decent clip, which is fine. I mean, he's the least popular vice presidential pick in history, including Palin. And I will say this about Vance, I think a legitimate thing. Trump is now the oldest person ever to seek this office as a nominee. Certainly in our research, we're starting to see more voters now recognize that Biden kind of blocked that for him. You're starting to hear people refer to him as geriatric and he doesn't have plans for the future. And this is where J.D. vance is relevant. If you're the oldest person ever to seek the office as a major party nominee, you know, it's fair to ask, what if something were to happen to you if you got elected? And JD Vance is not a great answer for voters, particularly women voters, but all voters. I mean, he's a huge problem. And you can see when Trump gets asked about him, it's super uncomfortable. He'll say he doesn't matter or it's great. So it's fascinating to me. But there's a lot of different things here. So that's one of the challenges of the campaign is you got Project 2025, you obviously have abortion, you've got Trump's attacks on democracy, you've got his age. There's a lot of things that concern voters. And our job is to make sure that, you know, we deliver those message properly to the voters that care, but also to deliver a really positive, forward looking agenda for Kamala Harris. And she's gonna start laying that out starting Friday of this week with I think, an important speech about her ideas about how to cut costs for middle class families.

Jon Favreau (40:43)

Yeah, I was gonna ask about sort.

Dan Pfeiffer (40:45)

Of the mix of messaging like Biden campaign strategy, which I think was the right one, was to make the race about Trump, remind people of who he is, what he did, what he'll do if he wins. Again, part of the necessity of that strategy was that voters know who Joe Biden is and most of them didn't approve of the job he was doing. So you want to make it about Trump.

David Plouffe (41:03)

Right.

Dan Pfeiffer (41:03)

Most voters know who Kamala Harris is, but they don't know a lot about her and what she'd do as president. Like, how do you think about the balance between making the campaign's message about Harris and Making it about Trump.

David Plouffe (41:15)

Well, John, this is, you know, you asked about time, the benefits and some of the challenges of time. We don't have much time. And you think about it, it's not just through Election Day. A lot of people are going to vote. Ballots start going out in battleground states very soon in North Carolina and Wisconsin. So you've got to introduce her biography. The things she's accomplished for people, why she did them, her values, what got her into public service, you've got to talk about, here's what I want to do. On the economy, on job creation, on cutting costs, on health care, on protecting Medicare and Social Security, on foreign policy. But you're gonna have to do that, I think, as much as possible with a contrast with Trump. So I think, yeah, she's got more to do than Biden did. Cause she does have to introduce herself, reintroduce herself, provide more depth there. Super important, you know, voters understanding where someone comes from, how they grew up, informs their values. It's super important for voters. So we have a lot of work to do there, but we also have to lay out a searing contrast. The way I think about it is you want as many voters as possible to think, okay, I'm gonna compare Kamala Harris and Donald Trump on the next four years. Let's see if they're both president. What would that mean for me and my family? And I still believe in every battleground state, there's more than 50% of the people, all things being equal, that would not like a return of Trump. By the way, I wish that number was 60 or 65. It's not. But it's enough to win the election. And we've gotta make sure we tap into those people. But that's gonna require not just the argument against him, it's gonna require, I think, building confidence and real knowledge about who she is and what she stands for.

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Jon Favreau (44:00)

I was going to ask about Trump.

Dan Pfeiffer (44:01)

Because the guy over the last couple months, you know, convicted of a felony, survives an assassination attempt, wins the debate, and his vote share hasn't really changed.

Jon Favreau (44:13)

Her vote share has changed from Biden.

Dan Pfeiffer (44:15)

And even just as the days go on, his hasn't.

Jon Favreau (44:18)

He's also maybe more popular at this point, favorability wise, than he was in 16 and 20. What do you think's going on with Trump?

David Plouffe (44:25)

Well, I think Republicans now, I mean, his takeover is complete. So I think you see Republicans just giving him, on questions like approval, a stronger. Yes, it has become the cult. So, yeah, I mean, he's guaranteed 46% of the vote in every battleground state. He won the presidency in 2016, in some states under 47%. That was his national vote share. That was his national vote share. In 20 as well. He got under 47, but there was less third party votes. So, you know, he was not able to get 270. I think that in some battleground states, he's at that 46. There are some where he's 47, 48, and that's the challenge of the campaign, is to get him back to 46. Now, to your point, the third party vote share is collapsing in the Harris Trump race. And you'd like to think it's because, you know, RFK Jr. Is eating dogs and throwing dead bears in Central park and all the things he says. But I just think this dynamic's different. And there's some evidence that RFK may be taking a little more vote from Trump, although I think it's too early to really know what that'll be like on election day. So I think, yes, there are some people right now saying they're gonna vote for Donald Trump. If they're a firm voter, they're not going anywhere. But a bunch of those people are soft. And so, yeah, when you think about it, you have to obviously max out your registration. You gotta max out your turnout. You gotta max out your vote share across all these cohorts. You gotta win the majority of the undecided vote. Then you've gotta pull a Little bit off him. And I think that what I've seen in the research is those voters who might be soft, Trump kind of flirting with Trump, they're super curious about Kamala Harris. They're like, okay, a new entry now. I'm excited about that. I want to learn more about her and if she can answer the mail there in terms of who she is and how she'll fight for them and that she will be, you know, a better president for people like them, she can win this race. But, yeah, we got to pull a little off him. And I think it's really important for people to understand that. Your question is super important. It may not seem like a point, point and a half matters in terms of him being a little stronger, but it does.

Dan Pfeiffer (46:24)

Yeah.

David Plouffe (46:24)

And that's mathematically something that has to be addressed. You've got to get him down a little bit. Now, what I've seen is there's some states where he's already fallen kind of to the point where he wouldn't win the election at the level he's at now. But there's some other states where he's still in that, like, 48, 49 range, and you'd like to get him back down to where he was in 16 and 20.

Dan Pfeiffer (46:44)

There was this thought some people expressed during the Biden Trump race where, contrary to popular belief, Democrats would actually do.

Jon Favreau (46:52)

Better if it was a lower turnout.

Dan Pfeiffer (46:53)

Election, if the electorate ended up looking more like a midterm election where Democrats have been doing well for the last several years. It does seem like now we're back in a world where increasing turnout, registering more voters is going to help us. But how do you think about those sort of not non voters, but people, occasional voters, sporadic voters.

David Plouffe (47:12)

Right. Well, so, you know, in politics, like, in life, it's, like, important to delineate between what you can control and what you can't control. So what you can control is trying to register and turn out all the voters that you're pretty confident would vote for Kamala Harris. Right. And so I think that's what you can not control, but you can control your effort and your thought and your resources there. You know, I think the question would be. So there was a lot of experts who were saying in the Biden and Trump race that maybe turnout to be quite a bit lower than 20, 20, maybe, let's say 130 million. So let's say it is not gonna be 130. Let's say it's 150, 155, 160, 165. The question is, okay, that added vote, who's it going to benefit? And there's no doubt that Trump will get some of that vote. Polls were showing that he was doing a little bit better, but I think Harris is going to be able to bring a lot of new people out as well, do well with new voters. Some of those are younger voters. They're excited about her. And I think we can. We've already seen some pretty encouraging data in terms of registration since she became the candidate. And I think that the campaign obviously has a very good sense of who are voters at risk of not turning out who would support her. So a lot of effort's going to go in there. And as you know, campaign can have all the money in the world, all the people resources in the world, but if there's not enthusiasm, it's hard to get that job done. Yeah, you can't manufacture that. And right now we're seeing real enthusiasm for her, and I think that's going to matter a great deal. So what you want is if there is going to be bigger tear, not. You just want to make sure that you've gotten your appropriate share of that so you feel comfortable that you can win the race at 130 million, 140, 150, 160. And my guess, it's a little bit early now to predict exactly what the turnout's going to be, battleground state by battleground state. But by mid September, I think we'll have a very good sense of that.

Dan Pfeiffer (48:53)

Last question. We spent a lot of time this season trying to arm volunteers with advice and messaging that they can use when they're talking to people in their lives who haven't yet made up their minds about November. You're seeing all the research, you're talking to voters, you're figuring out what resonates with ads.

Jon Favreau (49:08)

What advice would you give to folks.

Dan Pfeiffer (49:10)

Listening right now regarding what they should tell their family and friends and even strangers to get them to turn out for Kamala Harris and Tim Walls, who.

Jon Favreau (49:18)

Aren'T sure if they want to do that yet.

David Plouffe (49:20)

Right. Well, first of all, I mean, I think, listen, let's just use an example. You and I today, I think on that awful platform X, both lifted up this video of the Project 2025 founder basically saying, it's all bullshit. This is Trump's plan. And it's a wink and a nodding. You and I did that. Like, what I would say is anytime someone who sports Kamala Harris sees something that moves them, maybe it is something about Trump Maybe it is an ad. You know, she and Walls are gonna have this YouTube video. They're hanging out together, and it's quite a warm. Maybe it's that it's great. Maybe it's a friend or family member of them who made a video, say, you know, this is why I'm voting for Harris. Like, don't underestimate the power of. We all carry around these amplification devices, which are phones and laptops. So Whether you're on YouTube, Instag, TikTok, email list, text, share it. And I always tell people the reason to do it is some of those people who think just like, you will share it as well. And maybe you live in California or Texas, but your cousin or your friend shares it, and their friend in Pennsylvania sees it and they share it. In their cohort, they have Fox and Breitbart and Sinclair. They have their command and control, you know, megaphone system. We don't. I mean, we need people to share content that speaks to them, and there's nothing more organic. Say, this is why I'm voting for Kamala Harris, or this is why I've decided to vote. Right.

Dan Pfeiffer (50:44)

Yeah.

David Plouffe (50:44)

And of course, people should register on the Harris website. And you guys obviously have an amazing property with VoteSave to get more formally involved. But everybody has the opportunity in the course of their daily life to share stuff that speaks to them. By the way, it doesn't even have to be Kamala. Could be that prescription drug announcement today from the White House, you know, make sure people know about that.

Dan Pfeiffer (51:06)

Yeah.

David Plouffe (51:07)

And that Trump basically just called that today in his press conference a con job lowering prescription drug prices. Right. So I just think everyone's gotta take it on themselves. And I get that it can be an ugly task because you share that stuff publicly and your MAGA brother fires back and it's ugly, but we just gotta bowl through it. And everybody's gotta basically use what devices they have in their life, particularly for Kamala Harris, who a lot of people don't know that much about right now. And so we got to fill in those blanks. Right. And I think that you never know how you're going to reach somebody, even with all the money that's spent with advertising and targeting, and there'll be presidential debates. You never know if it's that little piece of video or an infographic or something you shared that somehow reaches its way to somebody in Wausau, Wisconsin, or in Wilmington, North Carolina, that then goes around in that circle and it reaches people and it has an effect.

Dan Pfeiffer (52:01)

Yeah. In Terms of messaging, it does sound like what you had previously said. Contrasts that are future oriented seem to be sort of the most effective ways to persuade people that, like, this is your life under Kamala Harris. This is your life under Donald Trump.

David Plouffe (52:16)

Yeah, well, Project 2025 is Trump's blueprint, so we gotta make sure everybody knows about that. What's in that? The reason he's running away from it. And this is a guy who tends not to run away from anything. He doubles down as he realizes how toxic it is. This is what he'll do. On abortion, obviously, we got to also remember, you got to tell the whole story. There are bans. Trump abortion bans in a third of the states because of Donald Trump. It's the thing he's most proud about. And if he's elected, the Republicans will pass a abortion ban nationally in Congress. And whatever he says, he's going to sign it. Obviously, ivf, contraception. They've talked about monitoring pregnant women. Trump even said, yeah, it'd probably be okay if states do that. People have to know these things. And John, you know, this having worked on campaigns, the things those of us in politics, or at least those of us that follow politics, see, you go talk to 12 sort of undecided voters in western Pennsylvania. Like, I didn't know that. Yeah, no idea. So you gotta assume a lot of these voters are not paying close attention. So have a conversation with them. But, yeah, and then Kamala Harris, you know, plans to cut costs, strengthen the Affordable Care act, obviously, really focus on the care economy, so important to so many people. But, yeah, that's gonna be important. So I think, listen, if by, you know, the beginning of October, hopefully most of the voters that will decide this election know what Project 2012 is and how it will affect them, they are more concerned about what Trump would do, as in a return from a women's healthcare standpoint. And of course, we know that part of this is the way you bring the past is he's the same angry, divisive, horrible person. Two things have changed. He's eight years older. He's the oldest person ever to seek this office, and now he has a plan. And you should be very scared, because that's dangerous.

Dan Pfeiffer (54:01)

That's good. On that note, thank you, David Plouffe. Thanks for doing this. And also the country thanks you for helping out on this.

David Plouffe (54:08)

We're all in this together. You know that, brother. Yeah, we sure are.

Dan Pfeiffer (54:11)

We sure are. Well, I'll let you get back to work. And thanks again.

David Plouffe (54:14)

All right, see you.

Jon Favreau (54:21)

So, Plouf, brings us back to where we started. In a close race, everything matters. The candidate matters.

Dan Pfeiffer (54:27)

At least I think so, or I wouldn't have spent most of July pissing.

Jon Favreau (54:30)

Off a lot of people who rightly love and admire Joe Biden. But clearly, Kamala Harris being the new Democratic nominee has already mattered. Clearly, the decisions of the Biden turned Harris campaign will matter. Any number of unforeseen events between now and November could matter. There is literally nothing that would surprise me at this point. But what we do matters, too. And it potentially matters. Most people make up their minds about politics because they have countless conversations with friends, family, colleagues, or perfect strangers. And unlike any of the factors I just mentioned, candidates, campaigns, the crazy shit that keeps happening, we can control whether we have those conversations and how we approach them. The vibes weren't great when we started the season. Then they got worse. Then they got much better. But the vibes don't decide the election. Voters do. When most voters and most Democrats weren't excited about Biden running, it made sense to remind each other that this election isn't about Joe Biden or Donald Trump. It's about us and our future. But the truth is, for all the excitement we feel around Kamala Harris incredibly promising candidacy, it's still about us. The people who haven't decided yet, the people whose votes will decide the election. They want to know who sees them, who gets them, who will fight for them. They want to know who will try to make their lives a little better and keep their families safe. They want to know what kind of country they're going to live in for the next four or eight years. As we've heard from all the focus groups, some of these people can be really annoying. They can be misinformed. They can have a weird combination of political views that make no sense to you. They can hold political views that make you really mad. That's okay, judge them if you must, but we need their votes. That's how we win. We win because we persuade people to take an action that they otherwise wouldn't have taken. Someone who was thinking about voting for Trump or voting third party, or even staying home. All of those are hard conversations, just in different ways. They require us to listen, to be open, to show empathy, to presume good intentions, to give each other a little grace. Maybe this sounds soft to you, but really, it's just math. There's no easy path to 270. I'd rather be us than them, and I'd definitely rather be us now than us in July. But we're not just posting and memeing and vibing and partying our way to victory here. This is going to be work. This is going to be hard. And the stakes haven't changed. The threat of a more vengeful, more powerful Trump presidency is right there. But so is the end of the Trump era in American politics. It's right there, too. We can see the path out of the wilderness. We can see the day where we finally get to stop talking about this fucking guy and move on. We just need to convince enough people that we should. We need to have those conversations. Lots of them. And even if you only persuade a few voters, you can be the one who made all the difference. Because, as it always has, everything matters. Now let's go win this thing. The Wilderness is a production of Crooked Media. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau. Our senior producer and editor is Andrea B. Scott, Austin Fisher is our producer and Farah Safari is our associate producer. Sound designed by Vasily's Fotopoulos, music by Marty Fowler, Charlotte Landis and Jordan Kantor. Sound engineered the show. Thanks to Katie Long, Reid Churlin, Matt degrat and Madeline Herringer for production support to our video team, Rachel Gajewski, Joseph Dutra, Chris Russell, Molly Lobel and David Toles who filmed and edited the show. If the Wilderness has inspired you to get involved, head on over to votesaveamerica.com2024 to sign up and find a volunteer shift near you.

David Plouffe (59:04)

Sam.