Democrats' Closing Argument (with David Axelrod)

Jon Favreau (0:20)

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau. Heading into any big election, there's always a handful of people I want to hear from most, and one of them is my good friend and mentor, David Axelrod. Ax and I worked closely together for nearly a decade, from when Obama was a senator through his first term in the White House. He is the rare political strategist with a heart as big as his brain, and understands the power and the craft of storytelling better than anyone I know, other than maybe our old boss. He founded the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, currently serves as CNN's chief political analyst and host of the excellent podcast Hacks on Tap. Two of us had a great conversation about the state of the midterms a few weeks out. We reacted to the highlights and lowlights of this week's big Senate debates, and talked about what Democrats need to do to close strong in November, and then went back to the White House in 2028 Before we get to our conversation, the midterms are less than 30 days away, and Crooked Con is too.

It is November 5th through the 7th in Washington DC, and we really want to see you there. We just announced 24 different conversations and debates across four stages, everything from the Democratic brand to the future of AI to building a winning campaign for 28 We've also got a live taping of Still Counting with Nate Silver, Claire Malone and Galen Druke, and that's in addition to Pod Save America, Love It or Leave It, and Strict Scrutiny live shows. So head on over to crookedcon.com to get your tickets now, and stay tuned for, we got a whole bunch more exciting names that we're going to add to the line up in the weeks to come. Up next, David Axelrod.

Axelrod, welcome back to the show.

David Axelrod (2:05)

Always good to be with you, brother. I'm always happy when I'm with my old buddies from the writers room at the White House.

Jon Favreau (2:14)

I know, we haven't talked in a while. I guess we have to schedule interviews in order to catch up on our respective podcasts.

David Axelrod (2:23)

Yeah, well, I'm glad to be here.

Jon Favreau (2:24)

We haven't got a chance to talk midterms in a while. I want to get into some of the individual Senate races with you and play some clips from all the Senate debates this week.

SPEAKER_3 (2:34)

Yeah, those are fun.

Jon Favreau (2:36)

Yeah, a lot of debates this week. But just to start, at this point, it seems like everyone's in agreement that the political environment is bad for Trump and the Republicans, and the only real question is how bad.

Personally, I feel like between the economy and the war and Trump's approval, if Democrats can't win at least some of these red states, with a midterm electorate, it ain't happening for a long, long time. But what do you think?

David Axelrod (3:05)

And with some good candidates.

First of all, Favreau, I don't know if you're having flashbacks, but I sure am from 2010 And I watched the Republicans and they're doing what we did, which is to try and rationalize that what is obviously happening isn't going to happen.

I think that the climate is bad for Republicans and getting worse. The president is not helping. I mean, I'm not saying that Donald Trump is trying to lose the election for Republicans, but if he were trying, he would not do anything differently than he's doing. I mean, it's really quite remarkable how much he has undermined them. And boy, I'll tell you what, there's going to be a whole lot of rage after the fact if this goes down as it could. One of my questions about these red states that I've been thinking about is, we're measuring these states at, you know, we say I was a 13-point Republican state because that's what Donald Trump got last time. You know, more than a small portion of that 13% were people who didn't like Donald Trump, but were really upset about the economy, didn't think that Biden had got it and was handling it. Kamala was the number two in that operation. And they just, you know, Trump was the economy guy, right? That's how they remembered him. And they said, all right, we'll go take a shot on this. I don't think that Iowa's 13 points, you know, I don't think Ohio's 13 points necessarily. But they're certainly red states. So that's point number one.

Point number two, the environment is so, I mean, Trump is more unpopular, I think than any president has been going into a midterm election since like Harry Truman, who also didn't do very well by the way. And I think the house is gone and it's just a question of margin. But so much of this is about Trump because midterms are always about the guy and the president. It's always been a guy so far, the guy in the White House. And if people are unhappy with the direction of the country and particularly the economy, it's a really rough go for that party. And their play now is to try and just spend, spend, spend. I did a thing with Chris LaSavita and Tony Fabrizio at Arizona State University at the beginning of the year. And I asked them about the midterms. And they said, we studied the midterms. We understand where things have gone wrong. We were outspent by Democrats the last couple of elections. We're going to make sure we vastly outspend them this time. We're going to make, at that time, it was Mamdani. He's become a little too, you know, when Trump is embracing him, it makes it a little harder to target. We're going to make these lefties the face of the Democratic Party, and we're going to make it about them, and we're going to make it about, you know, immigration and taxes and crime. And, and, and, but the third thing they said was, and we had this big, beautiful bill, and we front-loaded all these tax cuts, and people, you know, our bet is that people are going to be feeling better about the economy come the fall.