WTH happened to the Blue Wave? What went wrong (and right) in the polls, who will control the Senate, and what it all means for the next president
Episode #77 | November 6, 2020 | Danielle Pletka, Marc Thiessen, and Mo Elleithee
Danielle Pletka: Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka.
Marc Thiessen: And I'm Marc Thiessen.
Danielle Pletka: Welcome to our podcast. I can't believe I can say this, and it's even more apt this
Marc Thiessen: If there was ever the name for a podcast in 2020, that was it.
Danielle Pletka: You're not kidding. It was a brilliant inspiration.
Marc Thiessen: We saw it, we saw it coming, 2020. We got the perfect name for a podcast.
Danielle Pletka: All that's missing is a meteorite. So what are we talking about today?
Marc Thiessen: Well, we're talking about whether the guy who introduces our podcast is going to have a job.
Danielle Pletka: And that's a good question. Certainly a pretty great night for a lot of Republicans, but it's still an ambiguous night for Donald J. Trump.
Marc Thiessen: Yep. As we record this, it is Thursday afternoon and we still don't have a president. I'll tell you what we do know though, the polling industry is in a world of hurt. The polls got it so wrong. We kept hearing, "Oh yeah, they've adjusted newspaper, The Washington Post, had Biden winning Wisconsin by 17 points. Seventeen points.
Danielle Pletka: That poll was a disgrace.
Marc Thiessen: And I will tell you, if you're a Conservative, you're looking at that and you see there was all the polls saying that Donald Trump was not going to win, that there was a blue wave coming, that the popular vote was going to be through the roof. And by the way, everyone talks about the RCP averages like, "Well, the RCP
2 averages we're closer." That's because of Trafalgar. That's because a few Trumpy polls that got it right were pulling up the averages. If you take out Trafalgar from the RCP averages, it's all wrong. They just got it completely wrong.
Danielle Pletka: Right.
Marc Thiessen: And the reality is that this country, a lot of people supported Donald Trump. Despite four years of calling him a racist and a bigot and a ...
Danielle Pletka: And a Russian stooge.
Marc Thiessen: ... Russian stooge and trying to impeach him and all the rest of it, he's still hanging in there and it's darn close.
Danielle Pletka: It is darn close. Look, I can't stand all of these crazy town conspiracy theories that are furthered by social media. But I think it's not a conspiracy theory to suggest that the media and the establishment political elite that is engaged in polling and in political commentary and in newspaper, the editorial pages of newspapers, actually deliberately got it wrong. They have nothing but contempt for Conservatives.
Marc Thiessen: Not just for Trump.
Danielle Pletka: No, not just for Trump, not just for Trump. How many times have you heard this in me when we were off camera when I was on TV.
Marc Thiessen: On your panel?
Danielle Pletka: Yeah. Someone said that to me, and I won't say who, because ...
Marc Thiessen: Knowing you're a Republican, they basically called you a racist to your face?
Danielle Pletka: Yeah, yeah.
Marc Thiessen: Wow.
Danielle Pletka: Unbelievable. And you know what is remarkable is notwithstanding this coalition of contemptuous, editorial page editors and pollsters and commentators and Never Trumpers, people still voted for the man.
Marc Thiessen: Yep.
Danielle Pletka: I mean, how out of touch are these people?
Marc Thiessen: Well, a couple of things to think about. One, I wrote a column last week before the election, a thought experiment on what the Trump presidency would look like with the mute button on. And just all the things that he's done. And I concluded by saying, of course you can't put the mute button on the presidency.
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3 I'm a former speech writer, a presidential speech writer, I know the President's words matter. But you know what? A lot of the country does follow the Trump presidency with a mute button on. Donald Trump says something crosswise to a reporter in the press briefing room and official Washington sets its hair on fire. Outside the beltway and, as what Scott Walker calls the 46 square miles surrounded by reality, out in reality, they're not setting their hair on fire all the time over every dumb thing he says.
Marc Thiessen: They're looking at what he does and a lot of people liked what he did. I mean, the poll that struck me the most going into this election is that 56% of Americans, Gallup poll, said they're better off now than there were four years ago. That is in the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of the worst recession since the great depression, in the middle of racial unrest, they still said they were better off. So it shouldn't have come to a surprise to everybody in Washington that he did as well as he did.
Danielle Pletka: Right. And he did as well as he did despite desperately trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. So if Donald Trump doesn't make it, and let's just say, if he does make it, it'll be a total squeaker. But if he doesn't make it, I think, yes, of course, all of these things that we've talked about endlessly on these podcasts, his bad judgment, his affinity for strong men leaders, notwithstanding the policies of his administration. His ambiguity and inability to denounce people who like him no matter how loathsome they may be, all of those things, I think, didn't kill him as much as that first debate.
Marc Thiessen: Absolutely. So I've had a theory. We kept hearing, I've talked about this a lot, if you watch Fox News and you see me on the air, but we heard a lot during this
who wears a MAGA hat in the house but takes it off before he goes out, right? A guy who won't put the Trump sign on his lawn ...
Danielle Pletka: As an etiquette specialist, let me just say that anybody who wears a hat in their house is not allowed.
Marc Thiessen: And the coastal elites have spoken. But I guess it's the Australian coast. But I've been talking about the reluctant Trump voter, which is a different animal. The reluctant Trump voter is one of those 20% of people in 2016 who said, "I voted for him, but I don't like him." The reluctant Trump voter are these people who say, "Yeah, he's better on the economy. I trust him more. I prefer his policies to the policies of Joe Biden," Gallup poll, 49% plurality prefer Trump's policies to Biden's policies, "but I just can't take the chaos, I just can't take the ... "
Danielle Pletka: The exhaustion.
Marc Thiessen: There was a level of Trump exhaustion in the country because in the middle of the pandemic, fighting with reporters about fake news when people just want information, right?
Danielle Pletka: And also the constant character assassination. I mean, again, I think you've detailed very nicely how Dr. Fauci has actually given misleading information to the country. You had a good piece on that in the Post. He's not the saint that
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4 people say, but on the other hand, Donald Trump freaking control yourself.
Marc Thiessen: Exactly. And so, he realized that he was screwing up with the pandemic, so all of a sudden a few months before the election kicked in, he was having these briefings where he's just laying out facts, not getting into fights, trying to be normal, be presidential and all the rest of it. He had a normal convention, he did all this and then we get to the first presidential debate and something like 73 million Americans tuned in to watch that, right? And you don't get that kind of attention, even a State of the Union Address only has 40 or 50 million people.
Danielle Pletka: And he comes across as a son of a bitch.
Marc Thiessen: Yeah.
Danielle Pletka: That's a nice word.
Marc Thiessen: And I think a lot of people watched that debate and said, "I'm done."
Danielle Pletka: Yep. Don't need to tune in anymore.
Marc Thiessen: Don't need to tune in anymore, I'm done. If he had done the second debate twice, I think he would have won.
Danielle Pletka: If you think this is about 100,000 votes around the country potentially, absolutely, I couldn't agree more. Now let's just quickly talk about Joe Biden, because the way that Joe Biden designed his campaign, and you and I both said, "We'll either call it brilliant or we'll call it the stupidest thing anyone ever did." Well, it's edging towards brilliant, is that he had and made this a referendum on Donald Trump camera hog, right? And so, now the question is if Joe Biden ends up winning this race, ends up being crowned President, I realize that's not the right term, but it seems okay. What kind of a president is he going to be? Is he going to be someone who is actually what you have said and what I have said, "A Trojan Horse for the far left," or is he going to actually govern as Joe Biden 1995, as I like to call him, moderate Democrat, representing a party that isn't full of crazy lefty socialist nostalgics?
Marc Thiessen: Well we're going to a Democrat who's going to tell us a little bit about that in a minute. But I'll give you my two cents on it, which is the best thing that has happened to a potential Biden presidency, and I'm not conceding that there will be one, but if there is one is the fact that the Democrats look like they have failed to take back the Senate. Because if they took back the Senate, even by a one vote majority, the pressure to get rid of the filibuster would be huge and we've talked about this on the air about what the consequences of that would be from court packing to Senate packing to the green new deal to Medicare for All, and all the rest of it. Joe Biden would not be able to withstand it. First of all, it wouldn't be his choice, it's Chuck Schumer's choice. And two, he wouldn't be able to withstand the pressure to cave into his party's left. If he has to deal with Mitch McConnell, it lifts all the pressure on him, it absolves him. He can say to Ocasio- Cortez and Pelosi and the squad ...
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5 Danielle Pletka: Don't come to me, go talk to Mitch!
Marc Thiessen: ... "Don't come to me, talk to Mitch. We got to get something that can pass and I know how to pass stuff, but we're going to have to compromise." And so, Joe Biden promised, he campaigned, and also, there is no mandate for socialism from this election. One, this was a referendum on Trump, both Republicans and Democrats said they were voting on Trump. And two, to the extent that there's any mandate, it's a mandate for moderation. It's a mandate for a unifier, right? If Joe Biden gets the election. So he has no mandate for the Green New Deal and for Medicare for All, this socialist spending, he's going to have to compromise. And it's not going to be compromising with Bernie Sanders, it's going to be compromising with Mitch McConnell and that's a whole different animal.
Danielle Pletka: I bet in his heart of hearts, Joe Biden's pretty happy about that. We didn't talk about this, including with our guest, but I want one word on this with you, not one word, that's a lie obviously. The House of Representatives ...
Marc Thiessen: When have I ever given you one word?
Danielle Pletka: Never. In one word, never. House of Representatives, we're looking at probably a net pickup for the Republicans of 10. Charlie Cook and the very respected Cook Political Report the day before the election said we're looking at a net pickup 10 to 15 for the House, for the Dems. That didn't happen. Is Nancy Pelosi going to survive this?
Marc Thiessen: That's a really interesting question. I don't know. I mean, clearly it doesn't have the same impact as it would in this kind of a set back would in the Senate because individual members of Congress don't have a lot of power compared to individual senators. So I don't know how it's going to affect her governing, but it's a really fascinating question whether in this election, does the left go after her, right?
Danielle Pletka: It's certainly sounding like they might.
Marc Thiessen: And do they say, "We squeaked by in the presidency because of Trump but if you want to win House races you have to run on an agenda and we didn't energize the progressive base enough. And we need a young, progressive
Danielle Pletka: So we're really lucky, especially in this week of political insanity to be joined by your colleague from Fox News and a really terrific political campaign strategist, Mo, and he goes by Mo, I guess not Mohamad, Elleithee who is a former spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, former spokesman for Hillary Clinton, and on top of all of that, the Director of the Institute of Politics and Public Service at Georgetown University, a very fine institution.
Marc Thiessen: It is a very fine institution that has some questionable faculty.
Danielle Pletka: He's talking about me.
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6 Marc Thiessen: Exactly. Mo and I do a segment every Monday on Bill Hemmer Reports on Fox
Danielle Pletka: Oh my God. All right. Well, this is Thursdays with Mo, Marc, and Dani.
Marc Thiessen: Doesn't have the same ring to it.
Danielle Pletka: Not quite.
Marc Thiessen: Here's Mo.
Marc Thiessen: Well, Mo, welcome to the podcast.
Mo Elleithee: Thanks for having me.
Marc Thiessen: So you and I were on the Fox set for probably what, six hours, seven hours on Tuesday night? The first question is, have you recovered?
Mo Elleithee: We were together for far too long.
Danielle Pletka: That's going to be the story of this election.
Marc Thiessen: I will try not to take that personally.
Mo Elleithee: No, it was a long night to kick off a long week of what has been a very long campaign.
Marc Thiessen: Well, look, as we record this, we still don't have a winner, but one thing that we do know, and that we discussed on the air on Tuesday night, is that the polls were so wrong. They were predicting a Biden wave and that Democrats were going to take over the Senate, and it's a really close election. What do you think happened?
Mo Elleithee: I look at it a little bit differently. I think at the presidential level, the polls were actually not that wrong. What they showed was a very close race at the state level in a bunch of states, and what we got were a bunch of very close calls in a bunch of states. The popular vote had Biden up. He's up in the popular vote. In state after state after state, we were seeing margin of error margins, and every one of these states has been that close. There are a couple of states that were off. Florida was off. But even then, it was still within the margin of error in the poll.
Mo Elleithee: So I think the polls have gotten better than they did four years ago. I think they accurately reflected that we're a 50/50 nation, because we're seeing a bunch of 50/50 states come out of this that are just tipping towards Biden right now, which most of the polls predicted. Where they were really off was the Senate. In that, I think there's going to need to be some reflection on why they could be so close at the top of the ticket, but start to lose so much steam the further down they got.
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7 Danielle Pletka: So Mo, what do you think of this proposition that I think is being very widely bandied about at this point, that basically Conservatives, Trump supporters, people with serious trust issues, social trust issues, are not ever going to be talking to pollsters and there's no way of capturing them accurately? Do you think that's fair or unfair?
Mo Elleithee: Look, I'm not a pollster. So I have a hard time answering this one intelligently. I do think that there are a lot of people out there who supported the president very proudly, and I think there were some people out there who supported President Trump who were a little embarrassed by their support or were afraid to be public about it. But I've also heard from some pollsters out there that there could be a little bit of the reverse this time, people who didn't want to admit that they were wrong the first time when they voted for him who are switching, but switched their vote. That there could be people in split ticket households who didn't want to publicly say where they were.
Mo Elleithee: So look, I think it's going to take a little bit of time before we can fully analyze what happened with the polls. But, again, they did accurately reflect the fact that we are a very narrowly divided country, and I think it's impossible to argue with that fact right now.
Marc Thiessen: So right now, it's looking like Republicans will hold onto the Senate. There was only so far one net gain of a seat for the Democrats. If we are indeed a divided country and Joe Biden has said that he wants to unite the country and bring us together, isn't it really, in a way, a little bit better for him to have a Republican Senate in the sense that it insulates him from the pressure from his party's left to tack towards socialism and it increases the pressure for him to do what he did best when he was in the Senate, which is work across the aisle with Republicans?
Mo Elleithee: Unless something dramatic happens, we're looking at a very likely scenario of President Biden with a Republican Senate, and as someone ... From day one of his candidacy, he has talked about his desire to bridge the divide. He has a long record of working across the aisle in the Senate. He is a creature of the Senate who has a lot of personal relationships in the Senate. So I think that actually will work to his benefit. He goes in understanding not just the Senate, but individual senators far better than either of his two predecessors, and that's nothing to sneeze at.
Mo Elleithee: I think given that he's going to come in in the middle of this global crisis, you know that's going to be his top priority. There is, I think, a real frustration that COVID has become so partisan. If there's anything that should unite us, it is a major crisis. So I think he's going to look for those opportunities using that issue to find some commonality and maybe set a different tone from the start of his presidency than we've seen before. I hope so.
Danielle Pletka: Amen. I hope so, too. That would be absolutely awesome. I have so many questions for you, but let's talk a little bit about the electorate. I think a lot of people misjudged where the electorate is on a lot of issues. So Marc and I were just chatting before we got on with you about the fact that in California, Proposition 16, which sought to reinstate affirmative action ... I mean, it was called diversity, but it was basically the same thing, went down resoundingly. A
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8 whole bunch of places saw that kind of repudiation, and when you see that in California, which is sort of the bluest of the blue, does that tell us something about where the zeitgeists of American Democrats are that's different from the conventional wisdom?
Mo Elleithee: Well, I mean, I guess it depends on what you think the conventional wisdom is of the zeitgeists of Democrats these days. I don't think the Democratic Party is far left, despite how many times Marc and I have to have this argument on the air together. I don't think the party is being controlled by some crazy socialist wing. I think the majority of Democrats are center left, and the best evidence of that are our primaries, where far more moderate Democrats defeat progressive Democrats in primaries than the reverse. If it was a far left party, Joe Biden never would have become the Democratic nominee.
Mo Elleithee: You've got some very loud progressives, but what they are doing in a lot of places is just turning blue districts bluer, or they reflect blue districts that are turning bluer. The people who are turning blue districts red are the centrists. So I think that's kind of where the party is.
Mo Elleithee: Look, my take of the electorate, and I think there's enough evidence now to support this over the past few election cycles, is that we are very polarized and we are very divided, but it's not so much by ideological left versus right spectrum, that what's really dividing us is two things. One, it's not left versus right. It's front versus back. It's the people who feel like they are stuck at the back of the line who are really frustrated with the people at the front of the line who are keeping them in the back.
Mo Elleithee: So we are living in some form of populist era. The way it's playing out politically, I think, the greatest fissure in our politics is geographic. It's the closer you live to the downtown of a major metropolitan area, the more likely you are to vote for a Democrat in the last several elections. The further away you are from a major metropolitan area, the more likely you are to vote for a Republican.
Mo Elleithee: The urban-suburban coalition has been cemented. The suburbs used to be sort of a purplish shade of red, or a reddish shade of purple. They then became toss- ups. They are now solidly blue. They have banded themselves to urban areas. For a long time, that was the Democratic Party's goal and strategy, in the hopes that that would create a majority. Well, what we have seen in the last two elections is that while that coalition is solid, the rural vote, when it is incredibly motivated, it can match them in numbers.
Mo Elleithee: The thing that is motivating both right now is a sense of being victimized. It's a sense of grievance. So you saw two very animated electorates, the rural electorate and the urban-suburban electorate. That's a dangerous divide. I don't think either party can survive long-term by just focusing on that one base. The Republican Party is not going to be a successful long-term party if it is purely the rural party, and Democrats
Marc Thiessen: Rural and working class.
Mo Elleithee: But what you're seeing is a lot more working class voters who live in the suburbs
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9 and the cities breaking blue than breaking red. So there's going to be a lot of soul-searching both parties have to do now after this election to figure out how they can narrow that, and I fear that too many of the leaders are still thinking on the left versus right spectrum instead of looking at what's happening on the ground.
Marc Thiessen: So I'm not willing yet to concede the Joe Biden is going to be President, because we're not there yet. But I think since we have you, we really want to understand what's going on within the Democratic Party, because you're so steeped in it. So let's assume for a minute that Joe Biden is elected and Donald Trump leaves Washington, leaves the White House. So much of the Democratic Party has been driven by anti-Trumpism, and it's sort of unified Democrats across the spectrum. Joe Biden, one of the reasons he was able to unify the Democratic Party behind him is not because people really embraced his moderation. I think if you look at the Fox News voter analysis, the majority of people who voted for Biden were voting against Trump, not for Biden, and the number of people who say they agree with Biden on the issues was below 50%. So talk to us a little bit about the fissures that might now emerge within the Democratic coalition if anti-Trumpism is not there to be the glue to keep them all together.
Mo Elleithee: The immediate fissure is going to be sort of what we've already referenced a little, which is the far left versus the center left. That's a normal fissure. That is the mirror opposite of the same fissure that Republicans were grappling with for some time after the rise of the Tea Party. The far right versus the center. But I think the majority of the Democratic base is slightly more center left. Where I am hopeful the Democratic Party goes moving forward, and I feel good about it after seeing the success of Joe Biden in the party primaries, but also how he communicated during the campaign was with more of a message that can better connect the struggles of the base with those of working class voters. Joe Biden's success in this election was driven in large part by his ability to appeal to white, working class voters, about as equally or a much greater level than past Democrats have been able to, while still keeping the traditional Democratic base energized enough.
Mo Elleithee: And what's fascinating about the way he did it was by communicating ... I reject the premise that his entire message was anti-Trump. That's got a lot of attention just because of the unique nature of this campaign and how polarizing the president was. But if you ever listened to the true core of his message, it was one that articulated shared values between those different constituencies. I still think the notion that some Democrats were pushing after the success of Barack Because what that essentially said was that we don't need these white, working class voters if we just focus on the rising electorate of African-American, Latino, women, young voters. Eventually they will outnumber.
Mo Elleithee: That's not incorrect. They will outnumber and Democrats are smart to continue to appeal to those groups, but not at the expense of white, working class voters. And Joe Biden was actually able to connect some of those dots in a way that a lot of other Democratic candidates struggled to do during the primaries. If he's able to continue to do that as president, I think that serves the party well. But that needs to be the goal of the rest of the party as well. That needs to be the goal of
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10 Senate leaders, of House leaders, and not to allow the party to continue to be perceived as just a coastal party, or just an urban party.
Mo Elleithee: Look, let me give you one anecdote. I remember seeing some focus groups after the 2014 mid-terms, which was obviously a terrible night for us. And in these focus groups, the moderator gave everyone a piece of paper, and this was an exercise I hadn't seen before in focus groups, and asked everybody to, he was going to say a word and he wanted them to draw an image. The first picture that came to mind, and they had like 15 seconds to do it. The first word was Republican. And it's focus groups, so he got all sorts of different answers.
Danielle Pletka: Marc just drew a smiley face.
Mo Elleithee: But you started to see some commonalities. The most commonly drawn picture when people heard the word Republican was a dollar sign. And when we asked them why, the resp then.
Marc Thiessen: A lot.
Mo Elleithee: But as a Democrat, I was pretty pumped by that answer. Then we asked them to flip the paper over and the word was Democrat. The most commonly drawn picture ... I don't want to know what you're drawing right now, Marc.
Danielle Pletka: I was about to tell you.
Marc Thiessen: A sad face.
Danielle Pletka: It wasn't what you thought.
Mo Elleithee: But the most commonly drawn picture was a question mark. That's like a kick to the gut for a Democratic message person. And when we pushed them on it and voters, and for Hispanics, and for LGBTQ, or for young, but what are they doing
And when you ask them, they share a lot of the same concerns. Not entirely, but a lot of the same concerns. And it's about a lack of access to opportunity, and that's where the party needs to be.
Danielle Pletka: So, I mean, perfect segue to my question. Because, well, I mean, we have a world renowned demographer here at AEI, Nick Eberstadt, who probably hates mean, I do feel like our Democratic friends should have gotten a kick in the gut from something else in this election, and that is identity politics. The notion that for four years Donald Trump and the Republican Party have been called racists, and haters, anti-Black, anti-Brown, and yet managed, I'm just looking at The New York Times exit polls, I don't know whether it has the same credibility as everything else in The New York Times, but it's the best site for it. So Black men
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11 doubled the number. Now it's still only 18%, but that's pretty dramatic. Latino men, 36%. Latino women, 28%. All other races, 37%. What that tells me is that these are people who don't walk into a booth and think to themselves, first and s. Isn't that the message?
Mo Elleithee (29:25): Look, I don't ever want to be a part of a party that doesn't stand up against a lot of the behavior that appalled me from the Trump administration. I am proud that the party stood up to that. But the message has to be more than that. The
at's consistent with how he has neglected the community in these other ways. Here's what we
second half of that equation. Both parties have a real problem sometimes articulati
Marc Thiessen: Trump had a good answer to that question though, Mo. I mean, he had the lowest Black and Hispanic unemployment on his watch in the history of the country. He passed criminal justice reform. He passed a historic funding for historically Black colleges and universities, first time they had permanent funding. Opportunities zones. I mean, I think one of the reasons why he did make progress with those communities is because he actually did have an answer to your second question.
Mo Elleithee: No, he didn't. He had an answer
Marc Thiessen: A substantive answer.
Mo Elleithee: One of the biggest problems of the Trump candidacy was he never talked about what's next. He never talked about what's next. He would point to some of these things. He would point to the fact that Black unemployment was down, following, honestly, trajectories that he inherited. I give him credit for embracing criminal justice reform. I think he deserves credit for that. I think both parties, that was one of the rare moments of true bipartisanship we have seen in Washington in quite some time. But a lot of things he was taking credit for were things that were due to a trajectory that he inherited. But then when he mishandled COVID, the bottom fell out for a lot of communities.
Mo Elleithee: And where Trump made a mistake was he never said
ould have
Marc Thiessen: So we've only got you for a few more minutes, so I want to ask you an exit question for me. So we don't know who's going to win the election, but let's
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12 presume for the sake of our discussion that Joe Biden wins the election and is inaugurated president. Donald Trump isn't going away. He's still eligible to run for another term.
Danielle Pletka: Never, ever, ever.
Marc Thiessen: I have a theory actually, Mo, which is that this whole argument of fraud is not so much targeted at this election, but at the next election. That he's basically doing to Biden what the Democrats did to him, which is to call into question the legitimacy of his presidency, and then campaign in 2024 on reclaiming the stolen presidency. That's going to be a different dynamic than any president has faced, not just because of the individual personality of Donald Trump, but because we haven't had a one-term president who's then planned to run for reelection. And I mean, George Bush walked away and gave Obama his silence. Obama basically followed that, except for the campaign. Trump's going to be around from the beginning. He's going to be Tweeting, he's going to be active, he's going to be running. How does that impact the Biden presidency and how does Biden handle that?
Mo Elleithee: Look, you're assuming he's going to run again. I don't by
Marc Thiessen: Let's for argument's sake say he does.
Mo Elleithee: ... believe that. But I agree that he's going to be a loud and vocal force in our politics, whether he is a candidate for president again, or whether he creates a new media empire. He will be very loud. Look, Donald Trump was questioning the legitimacy of his own election. I've never before seen someone win an election, and at the same time claim widespread fraud in the election that they won. He has been masterful at manipulating grievance politics. I mean, for all the talk about the snowflakes of the left, he embraces snowflake-ism and has turned it into a political ideology. And whatever he does next, I think he is going to continue to be sort of the guy who tries to be the voice of the angry aggrieved out there, whether or not he does that through politics or whether or not he does that through trying to impact politics from the outside, which I think is more likely.
Mo Elleithee: There's nothing he'd loved more than to create a media empire and say he was the king maker in 2024. That noise will be there. And what I would argue for Joe Biden is to just ignore it. I still think 2020 was in part a referendum not so much on Donald Trump but on chaos. I think people are exhausted. I think they are exhausted of noise. And I think part of Biden's appeal has been, he was the anti- chaos, the anti-noise candidate. And so being able to restore a sense of calm will actually be the way for him to be successful as president, while blocking out and trying to marginalize the noise as much as he can. It won't be easy.
Danielle Pletka: No, it won't be easy. And my quick exit question, I know you've got to go is just about one of the things that you've talked about very eloquently, which is, who is the Democratic Party and where does it go? You rightly said it's got a lot of very loud people who may or may not represent where the party goes. In some way, Biden, if he becomes president, will have been saved because he will not see a Senate pushing to court pack, to end the filibuster, to bring D.C. or Puerto Rico
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13 into the union. What is the fate of these loud Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, squad types in the party? Do they continue to try to steal all the oxygen or is the party going ahead in a different direction with a new man at the top?
Mo Elleithee: I think it's going to become a bit of a coalition party, to be honest. I think they will have a voice. They will have a seat at the table. They will have a voice. And I think that's a good thing. I mean, it is a fairly diverse party ideologically. There's a lot of ground between the center left and the far left. And so having all those at the table. But Joe Biden has proven throughout his career that he's able to put a lot of people around the table and find a way forward that doesn't give everybody what they want, but at least keeps the ball going. That's where I think we will be. So, yes, Elizabeth Warren, AOC, Bernie Sanders, we haven't heard the last from them, and I don't think we should hear the last from them.
Danielle Pletka: I may differ with you on that one.
Mo Elleithee: I mean, I think their voices are an important part of the conversation, but I don't think a Biden administration will be held captive by them. I think they will get some things that they want, but not nearly everything that they want.
Danielle Pletka: And he will be helped in that no end by Mitch McConnell, which is probably a good thing. You've been awesome and so generous with your time at a time when I'm betting you are one of the most popular guys in town.
Mo Elleithee: Right. Well, trying to balance all of this craziness with two small kids at home has been quite the balance in the middle of this chaotic election.
Danielle Pletka: I can only imagine. Well, we're really grateful. Thanks a ton, and we hope we'll be able to have you back once this election is decided for once and for all.
Marc Thiessen: And I'll see you on Hemmer on Monday.
Mo Elleithee: I look forward to it. All right. Thanks so much.
Marc Thiessen: Thanks, Mo.
Danielle Pletka: Take care, Mo. Thank you.
Marc Thiessen: Bye.
Mo Elleithee: Bye.
Marc Thiessen: So Dany, I think Mo didn't bite on the idea of Donald Trump running for re- election. I think that if Donald Trump loses and, again, he may not, we may be here next week talking about the plans for the second term.
Danielle Pletka: Revenge, I think, are the plans.
Marc Thiessen: ... Will be plan for Biden's first term.
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14 Danielle Pletka: I still remember, just as a total aside, but I know everyone, anybody of a certain age remembers New York Mayor Ed Koch.
Marc Thiessen: Mm-hmm.
Danielle Pletka: And so after he was ousted from office ...
Marc Thiessen: By David Dinkins.
Danielle Pletka: ... by David Dinkins, he was actually at an event at AEI and so I asked him, "Do you think you'll run again?" And he goes, "No, Dany, the people have spoken, and they must be punished."
Marc Thiessen: My favorite Ed Koch quote. I grew up in New York under Ed Koch. I love that story. Look, the reality is I think if Donald Trump is not inaugurated for a second term, he is going to run again, if he wants it. And there's nobody who's going to challenge him for it, the nomination, it's going to freeze the Republican field, maybe Kasich, maybe some Never Trump person. I mean, you just look at the rallies. I mean, the 18 rallies he did in three or four days leading up to it. 20, 30,000 people, 40,000 people at an airport. I mean, it was enormous. The Republican base is Donald Trump's. If Donald Trump wants the nomination in '24, Donald Trump will get the nomination in 2024.
Danielle Pletka: And if it's Kamala Harris who is running, then wowee.
Marc Thiessen: I know.
Danielle Pletka: I can only imagine that race.
Marc Thiessen: But what are the next four years going to be like? Because we've never had a situation
Danielle Pletka: Where a former President won't shut up.
Marc Thiessen: I have to go back. Yeah. I mean, seriously. George Bush said, "I owe Barack Obama my silence," and he exited the stage. Barack Obama basically followed his model, not 100%, but close.
Danielle Pletka: Mostly.
Marc Thiessen: But both of them, their political careers were finished. I mean, we have to get a good historian to talk about it.
Danielle Pletka: Grover Cleveland.
Marc Thiessen: Was Grover Cleveland the last?
Danielle Pletka: Certainly, one of them.
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15 Marc Thiessen: Well, I know TR ran for president again after having exited the presidency. So, I mean, it's been probably going that far back where
Danielle Pletka: Twitter didn't exist then.
Marc Thiessen: The last president to lose out after one term was George H. W. Bush, and he basically retired. When's the last time we had a President who
Danielle Pletka: Wouldn't shut up.
Marc Thiessen: ... was an active political force after losing the presidency.
Danielle Pletka: Well, Jimmy Carter tries to be. But he, of course, isn't.
Marc Thiessen: It's going to be fascinating to see how that dynamic plays out if Donald Trump is out of the White House, but planning to come back in.
Danielle Pletka: Oh, it'll be amazing. And two minutes on my last question, what's the lesson the Democrats are going to derive? One of the most interesting things I've been watching since the election is the whipsaw that has happened among Democrats about whether they were right or wrong about the election. All recriminations on Tuesday night, all anger, and then Tuesday morning the return to that complacent back patting, circular admiration society that they like to run. But they really screwed up in the House and the Senate. What is the lesson that they
Marc Thiessen: Well, it depends on whether Biden wins or not. So if Biden doesn't win and if Trump pulls this out, then that is absolutely the lesson that they're going to take
put a veneer of moderation on our party and look what happened. Our base didn't turn out. We had an enthusiasm gap with Trump. And the lesson of that is we should be more like Trump. We should feed our base, throw steaks to the masses, give the people what they want. And the base of the Democratic Party is far left and so let's feed them. And then the moderates can either come along or
Marc Thiessen: If not, if Biden wins, then there's a counter argument to that that says, "Look, the voters are moderate. The country is not far left. And we won by putting a moderate on there and if he succeeds as governing as moderate, but will get things done with Mitch McConnell, then that'll be the lesson."
Danielle Pletka: I bet it's not.
Marc Thiessen: That's the lesson it should be.
Danielle Pletka: And on that
Marc Thiessen: We're going to solve all the Democratic Party's problems here on this podcast. We have all the answers.
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16 Danielle Pletka: Exactly. Anyway, it's been a long week for everybody. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. Don't hesitate to send complaints about Marc to Marc, praise for me to me, and complaints about the tech to Alexa. See you next week.
Marc Thiessen: Bye.
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