--:-- Gideon Resnick: I'm Gideon Resnick, and this is a special episode of Apple News Today, all about the 2022 midterm elections.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: On today's episode, we look at Democratic candidates and President Joe Biden who are making their closing arguments to voters in the final weeks of campaigning.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Republican leadership in Congress has made it clear. They will crash the economy next year by threatening the full faith and credit of the United States for the first time in our history putting the United States in default unless we yield to their demand to cut Social Security and Medicare.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The party is facing some typical challenges. A president whose approval rating is underwater, a moment in a term that is typically a referendum.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But there are plenty of atypical conditions too. The country is still reckoning with the overturning of Roe v. Wade and dealing with the highest inflation in four decades.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Also, there's the issue of the state of democracy itself. A recent headline from The New York Times about a poll they conducted captured the moment.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It read, Instead, for now, it appears that inflation and economic concerns are dominant. And their priority to voters have appeared to be a boon to Republican candidates in the final stretch.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: There are more situations across the country where it feels like Democrats are having to play defense, even as they argue that Republicans will make the economic situation worse.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Gabriel D. Benedetti is a national correspondent at New York Magazine and the author of the recent book The Long Alliance, The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: We talked about the relationship between the president and the former president, the headwinds that Democrats are facing ahead of Election Day, and what the end of the campaign is actually going to look like.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: I started by asking him what the party's closing message is right now.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That's a hard question to answer because in races all over the country, different Democrats are running on different things right now, which is what they usually do when they're on the back foot.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It's not a great time economically. And while they think they have a lot to run on in terms of the accomplishments of the Biden administration and their work with him, especially down the ballot, you know, we're talking about Senate candidates or House candidates in particular.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That's not really been coalesced into one message about their accomplishments.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Instead, what a lot of people are talking about are the threats on the Republican side.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You know, online, what a lot of them are discussing is how a lot of Republican candidates are election deniers, how they are worried about the future of fair elections.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But on the ground, realistically speaking, what you hear a lot of candidates talking about more than anything is basic economic issues and the right to choose.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You know, after the Roe v. Wade repeal earlier this year or the decision to overturn that, that has really been the operating thing that Democrats are focusing on.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And you see Biden doing that, too, because they see that as not only an existential issue, but also a way to really navigate some of the difficult economic waters, some of the difficult reality that Biden is not very popular right now.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That's an issue that does energize a lot of Democratic voters.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And you mentioned the fact that there are sort of legislative accomplishments to speak of in this first two years of Biden's term.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Are those translating when people are thinking about who they're going to vote for?
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: One of the issues that the administration in particular is dealing with, but also candidates on an individual basis are dealing with, is that a lot of the accomplishments that they can point to are not things that have day-to-day immediate impact on voters' lives.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And so while these are things that over the long run will certainly matter to voters a lot, if you talk about the infrastructure package and how the administration was able to get this across the line in a bipartisan manner, or if you talk about the massive amount of climate spending, these are things that voters say that they care about a lot.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: But what they tend to care about more on a proximate basis is how much are gas prices? What is inflation looking like?
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: So while voters tend to say that they approve of these big things that the administration has been able to do, when it comes time to actually vote, what you see over and over is that there are these swing voters or there are people who decide, should I vote or should I not vote, who are ultimately making a decision based on their day-to-day economics.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And that's why you see the administration trying to make the case. You see candidates trying to make the case that their vote – the things that they've been voting for, the things that they've been passing will make day-to-day life easier for voters.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: But, of course, inflation is still a big problem. And, you know, Biden saying he was going to relieve student debt is obviously a very big part of this, but it's not necessarily enough in many cases when you do see gas prices on the rise again.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Yeah. And you started this conversation saying that Democrats were on kind of a back foot right now.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So how is Biden handling that? What is his closing message? And is it different at all from what other Democratic candidates are saying?
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Well, Biden's in an interesting position because he is pretty unpopular right now, but that's not out of line with how presidents often are in their first midterm elections.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: You know, what usually happens is that the president's party doesn't do well in the first midterm elections of that presidency. It's always a referendum on the new president.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: We saw it with Barack Obama and he had his famous shellacking in 2010.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: The Democrats won pretty widely in Donald Trump's first midterm election.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Biden has differentiated himself from these others, though, because he is not making these midterms all about himself.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: But Biden is not out there campaigning that much publicly, doing public rallies for candidates.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Instead, he's doing small events. He'll talk about his accomplishments in D.C.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And just recently, we saw him stand up in D.C. and give a big speech essentially about protecting the right to choose, about how if Democrats are able to keep the House and Senate, that he will try and codify Roe v. Wade in the new year.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And that's really what he's been focusing on in the home stretch here.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Other Democrats are trying to talk about a more diverse set of topics and, frankly, not really talking about Biden that much at all.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: It feels in the last two months specifically, there was a huge focus on the issue of abortion, reproductive rights.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Other issues like gun control were coming up quite a bit over the summer.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And those were things where I think it's fair to say that Democrats were seeing in polling a lot of advantages sort of moving in their direction.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And things have started to change more recently.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So how, I guess, is Democratic messaging responding to that?
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: The short version is that it's not really.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: You do see a lot of candidates trying to be as local as possible, trying to focus on local issues and just trying to, you know, differentiate themselves from the administration whenever possible.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Some candidates have essentially, you know, when asked the question, should Biden run again, which is sort of a classic gotcha, you know, these are Democrats, but they've essentially said, You know, I'm not a pundit. This is not what I worried about right now
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And in many cases they trying to distance themselves by simply not having Biden come and campaign for them
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: They have not found that there a ton for them to talk about other than what they passed and what they want to pass in the future
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The problem, of course, is that the economic situation for a lot of voters is just not that great right now.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It's gotten better. But, you know, gas prices continue to go up, as I mentioned earlier, and that's a big problem that a lot of them are facing.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Republicans also have been going on offense, not just about general issues, but about crime, which is a problem that a lot of Democrats have been dealing with on the local level and have been trying to figure out a way to talk about in a useful way for median voters who are worried about the issue as well.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: A lot of them say that Republicans are pretty dramatically overstating how bad the problem is in their areas, but it's not an easy case to make and it's not an easy argument to make that they're finding in most cases.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And we're talking about what candidates are actually telling voters.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But what is it that you're hearing from Democratic voters and perhaps like Democratic leaning voters about what they want right now?
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Well, I think a lot of them want stability, you know, at the gas pump.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: I keep mentioning it because it really is so important for a lot of people.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: But inflation is a big issue. Cost of life is a really big issue.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: So I think a lot of people are just looking for guidance on when things are going to get cheaper again.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And this is something that the administration has tried to talk about, tried to explain why this is happening, tried to put a lot of the blame on the war in Russia and on decisions that Russians have made.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: But that kind of messaging hasn't really broken through.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And that's one of the reasons that you see a lot of people instead pivoting, not to talk about economics on the Democratic side, but to talk about Roe v. Wade, to talk about the legitimacy of elections, because they basically are trying to energize their voters by scaring them about what Republicans could do.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And in the case of abortion rights, for example, it's not theoretical at all because of the Supreme Court decision in many states, including a number of top tier swing states.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You know, if the Republican wins the gubernatorial race, for example, there go abortion rights in those states.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And so it's a very clear cut case for a lot of these folks to make.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: I want to get a little bit granular about where the president is actually going and not going.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So at this point, what have we seen in terms of the campaign schedule and what has been discussed about where he may go and why?
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: We haven't seen Biden in a lot of the top tier states with one exception, that being Pennsylvania, which is a state that he holds very close to his heart, having partially grown up there.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And he also knows that he's relatively popular there compared to some other states.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But he's not doing these big rallies where he's going to be the face of them.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And what he's not doing so far, at least, is doing any of these rallies at all in places like Georgia or Arizona or Nevada or Florida, Michigan.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: These are places with really big races and in many cases, not just one race, but multiples.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And instead, what Democrats are doing is bringing in other people who, for example, Barack Obama, who is able to go into these places because he's a bit more popular.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But Biden is focused very closely on a lot of these races.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: He just knows that it doesn't really help his party for him to be the face of what they're trying to do in these places.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: What he's thinking about in a lot of these races, take, for example, a state like Wisconsin, where there's a gubernatorial race, a Senate race, a number of down ballot ones.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: You know, Biden is looking very closely at it, not only because of what happens in these midterms will matter for control of the Senate, for control of governor's mansions, but also because the people who are in charge of running Wisconsin will have a pretty legitimate or pretty big, I should say, say on legitimizing the 2024 election, no matter which way that goes.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Because there are a number of Republican candidates there who have doubted the validity of the last election.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And that has really been a cause for serious concern in the White House and throughout the Democratic Party.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Is that a question that they're asking from the perspective of sort of self-preservation, for lack of a better word, in terms of Biden potentially running again and having an election process that is not thrown into enormous chaos?
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Yeah, absolutely.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: I mean, they're thinking of both races at once.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Obviously, the immediate concern is 2022. too.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Democrats want to keep control of the Senate, want to keep control of the House if they can, because they still want to continue to pass things and they don't want to have to be in sort of constant war on the legislative side with the Republicans who want to take over there.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: But there is this lingering fear about 2024, which is that Republicans up and down the ballot in this midterms have denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election and in many cases have explicitly but more often implicitly threatened the 2024 vote.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And so Biden, but a number of people like him and around him, have sort of said that one of the reasons that they need to focus on a lot of these races is to ensure that that happens in as few states as possible.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: You look at Arizona, where the gubernatorial candidate on the Republican side is one of the most prominent election deniers in the country.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Same with the secretary of state candidate on the Republican side.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: That's a top tier swing state in both this year, but also in presidential year.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So it makes sense for Democrats to say, you know, we got to make sure that this stays in our hands for now, at least.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And where is the White House concerned about? Are there places where they think that things are shaping up this year to be concerned about?
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Sure.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Well, look at, for example, what's going on in Nevada, which is, of course, a swing state, but one the Democrats have been pretty good about winning for the last few election cycles, both on and off years.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Catherine Cortez Masto is a senator there, the Democratic senator there, the first Latina senator.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: I'm Catherine Cortez Masto. And I'll always fight for a woman's right to make our own health care decisions.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: But Adam Laxalt won't. That's why I approve this message.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And she could be in serious trouble for her reelection, despite the fact that this is a diverse state that Democrats have been doing pretty well in for a while.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: The Republican Adam Laxalt is pretty well known in the state and appears to be running neck and neck with her.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Also look at Georgia, for example, where, you know, Stacey Abrams is running for governor, but appears to be running behind Kemp, who is the current governor.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And then you have Raphael Warnock is the current Democratic senator from that state.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: But he's running in a pretty tight race against Herschel Walker, who's, of course, a celebrity, former college football star Republican, but a pretty controversial one.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And that is going to be a very tight race.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Georgia need leaders. They need leaders that's going to stand up for them.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: So let's think about if we give Senator Warnock six more years, think what this country will become.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So those are Democrats who might lose their seats.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: But then you look at, you know, there's no doubt that the White House and other Democrats are concerned that their candidates in Wisconsin, for example, Mandela Barnes, who's the lieutenant governor, is now starting to fall behind the incumbent Republican, Ron Johnson, who was once thought to be pretty vulnerable in this election cycle.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Working people live with the constant threat of their jobs being shipped out of state or overseas.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Our democracy hangs in the balance.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Senator Johnson tried to overturn a free and fair election because he didn like the result
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Obviously all of this is subject to change and we see how accurate these polls end up being
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: But these are all reasons for nerves at least on the Democratic side
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And then the final one, of course, is Pennsylvania.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: I mean, there are a number of these, but the other one that a lot of people in the White House are focused on is Pennsylvania.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: This is a state where it appears that the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Josh Shapiro, is in good shape over a very controversial Republican, Doug Mastriano.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: But on the Senate side, with the retirement of Pat Toomey, who's a Republican, Democrats thought they had a pretty good shot at winning this state with John Fetterman, who's the lieutenant governor, a very interesting candidate.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: But he suffered a stroke right before his primary win.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And ever since then, Mehmet Oz, who is Dr. Oz, the Republican candidate, has used that to really try and regain ground there.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And that now looks like a toss up as well.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: In a number of these states, a lot of folks believe that had a different candidate come out, had Trump not gotten involved, that these races would be a lot more competitive on the Republican side.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Herschel Walker is a great example of this in Georgia, Oz and Pennsylvania.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: A lot of even Republicans in those states believe that had Trump not intervened, that really, you know, these races would be looking a lot stronger for the Republican.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: On the Democratic side, you know, it's not as clear cut because, of course, Fetterman is seen as a very strong general election candidate.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And the thing that has really made his life difficult, although there have been some standard political hits on him, is his stroke.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And there was, of course, no way of anticipating that that was going to happen.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Wisconsin is an interesting example on the Democratic side where you do hear some grumbles now from some folks who aren't so sure that Mandela Barnes, who is, again, the lieutenant governor, is the right person to be running against Ron Johnson.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Because Johnson has really been, and folks associated with him, have been really zeroing in on past comments that Barnes had made that are pretty progressive or, in some cases, sort of fringe on the fringe left views from really a long time ago.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: He hadn't deleted a lot of old tweets, for example.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: He's seen as a pretty far left candidate.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: He's done a lot to try and make himself seem accessible to most moderate voters because, of course, Wisconsin is a battleground state.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But that has been difficult and he's been it appears now running from behind.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: But again, there is a lot more angst on.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: I want to be clear about this.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: There's a lot more angst about this on the Republican side.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Look at a state like Ohio, which by all accounts is a pretty Republican state at this point.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: But Tim Ryan, who's the Democrat, appears to be running a pretty close race against J.D. Vance, who is the Trump selected choice for the Senate race there.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The exhausted majority who's tired of the games, we're tired of the hate, we're tired of the anger, right?
--:-- Gideon Resnick: We're tired of the division.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: We want to be Americans.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: I don't think most people would suggest that Ryan will win that race, but the very fact that Republicans have to be worried about Ohio tells you a lot.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And just to stick with Barnes and Fetterman for a second, too, these are two candidates who have won statewide before.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: So you would have thought going in that that is certainly a kind of validator for people who may have been nervous about their candidacies.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Totally.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And that's a totally legitimate point to make.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And so you see a lot of Democrats, in fact, making that point when they do get these concerns about this.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You know, even someone like Barack Obama, again, said recently that he thinks that Fetterman, you know, is a great example for Democratic candidates.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And maybe the way to look at this is, of course, that race was going to be competitive.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: It's Pennsylvania.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And again, the extraneous circumstance of him having a stroke is not really one that we can fit into usual political rubric here.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But if you look at Barnes, one case that I've heard made from a number of Democrats is that, yes, he won election in 2018 statewide.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: But, of course, that was during a year that was pretty good for Democrats overall.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Wisconsin won a bunch of race or Democrats won a bunch of races in Wisconsin, for example, but also all over the country.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So it was just a different environment.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Now, that said, I mean, you can really look at this both ways.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: If Democrats lose that race, it shouldn't be that shocking.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: This is a midterm election in, you know, where Democrats control the White House.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Yes, Barnes has the profile of a good candidate.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: He's won statewide.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: He's pretty well known.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: He's an interesting guy.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: He's a good campaigner.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: At the same time, Wisconsin is a battleground state.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: You know, Donald Trump won it and then Joe Biden won it.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Is it the shock of the century if a Democrat doesn't win, doesn't beat an incumbent Republican who, by the way, has a history of winning races that most people don't think he'll win?
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Not really.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Right, right.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Yeah.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Yeah, there's always just this sort of preemptive Monday morning quarterbacking about, yeah, any of these candidates in advance.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: So to go back to the point of Biden and Democrats having to play a little bit of defense here.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Recently he traveled to Oregon in a campaign event that was effectively for that gubernatorial election.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: I'm curious if you think that there could end up being places that he regrets not being able to go to if they end up being decisive.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: I think there are definitely a number of races where Democrats are a little bit concerned that things could turn ugly in the final weeks.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Oregon is a weird example.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And one of the reasons that Biden was comfortable going there is because it really is a weird race that has very little bearing on the overall national environment right now.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: That's a gubernatorial race where Oregon is a really traditionally democratic state.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: There is an independent candidate running right now, a former Democrat who's siphoning a lot of votes from the Democratic nominee by essentially saying Democrats have gone too far left on X, Y, and Z issues, crime, guns, things like that.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: She has siphoned a lot of votes.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So Biden is out there now trying to say, you know, you can't let Oregon fall into Republican hands because of this independent.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: That dynamic doesn't really exist anywhere else in the same way.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But there are a number of states.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: For example, look at Colorado is a good example of this.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: There's a Senate race there where Michael Bennett, the Democratic incumbent, is favored.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: You know, he should win reelection and he's been in this situation before.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But at the end of the day, Colorado is a purple state.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Biden hasn't gone there to explicitly campaign with Bennett.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You know, Obama has not announced that he would.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Kamala Harris has not done like a massive public event with Michael Bennett, at least not one.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You know, none of these people have done anything that is really headline grabbing.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: That's the kind of race where if things do turn sour for Democrats in the closing weeks, you could see, you know, real Monday morning quarterbacking because the Republicans have chosen someone who is essentially an anti-Trump Republican there.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: It's an interesting race.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And you obviously wrote a book about the relationship between these two men, which is sort of part of the defining story of the Democratic Party, at least for many, many years now.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: But I guess where do they stand in the party at this moment?
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It's a weird moment for both of them, because Obama is undoubtedly the most popular Democrat who willing to do this kind of campaigning
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And Biden is not very popular right now
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But they do have this sort of shared view about the importance of these midterms not only in terms of the short prospects of the party, but also for the future of democracy as they see it.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: They talk about the 2024 election constantly, or at least they talk about the future of free elections, I should say, within the context of that election, because of course they have not discussed personally whether Biden's going to run again or anything like that.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: They still talk on occasion.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: They're not, however, at this point, you know, texting each other.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: They're not best buddies talking about politics casually.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: They sort of see this as a joint endeavor where Obama is able to do something that he wasn't last time because, you know, last midterms during the Trump years, Obama was the de facto head of the party still, even though he really didn't want to be.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: He was out there much more.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: But now he's coordinating with Biden, coordinating with the White House, saying, tell me how I can be useful here and I'll do whatever you need.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: He's not, however, in any way trying to direct strategy.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: At the end of the day, he doesn't want to be the face of these midterms because they're not going to go well for Democrats.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And at the end of the day, also, there's not really a question that these are going to be midterms about Joe Biden, even if he's been successful in stepping back from the fray.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: He has had a string of legislative accomplishments, yet his approval rating is obviously underwater.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: I think a big part of it is that we live in a polarized world now where it's very difficult for any president to have an approval rating approaching 50 at all.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Biden did get a real uptake over the at the end of the summer for a number of his accomplishments.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And whereas he was sort of historically unpopular for a while, now he's just sort of boringly unpopular.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: He's just as unpopular as any president is.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But one thing that he's been pretty good at is making sure that these midterm elections are not just a straight up and down referendum on him.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That's what Republicans had tried to do for a long time.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: But, you know, because of a number of fringy candidates on the Republican side, because of the Roe decision and because of some things that Biden was able to do, whether it's the student loan decision, the climate legislation, more recently his move toward decriminalizing marijuana, there are other things for people to talk about.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Now, if the economy continues to sour, if gas prices continue to rise, you could easily see things shifting back.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But Biden is not really a sort of a singularly disliked figure in a way that Trump was at this point in his midterms.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And these pieces of legislation, they were obviously passed with the absolute slimmest of majorities.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: I feel like that's something that Biden kind of promised he could do during his presidential campaign.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: People didn't necessarily believe it.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So if this midterm election is ultimately a repudiation of him in a way, what does that end up saying about his style of governing?
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: It depends on who you talk to, because, of course, Biden did say from the start, I'll be able to work with Republicans. I'll be able to work with the Senate.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: We will get things passed.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: He also said that he was going to try and move the country past Trumpism and into a new generation of leadership.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: He talked about running a new version of FDR.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That was the environment that he thought that he was entering with when he thought that he was going to have more of a Democratic Senate and House to work with.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: So you can see this as a referendum on any version of that Bidenism.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And that's the unfortunate thing for him, of course, is that he has to make the case that even though Democrats are likely to lose the House and might lose the Senate, he has to argue for – he will be faced with the necessity to argue that this was not actually just a straight up and down referendum on any particular thing he did but rather more – what is the more likely thing here?
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: It's just a reflection of a national mood and it is not a good national mood right now.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The economy has bounced back more than many thought, but it does still seem that we're headed for a recession.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And there's no doubt that that's where, you know, general consumer and voter sentiment is right now.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You talked about Biden and Obama actually talking or not talking about whether or not Biden is going to run again.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So is he going to run for president again?
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: That is definitely the case.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: He believes that he will run for reelection for a number of reasons.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: One, he thinks he's been a good president.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Two, he's been trying to run for president for nearly half a century now.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: He's been talking about it at least.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And the idea, if you ask people who are close to him, that he would wake up one day and say, you know what? I've done it. It's fine. Let's move on.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: That's just not realistic at all.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And to him, it's almost an offensive question because, of course, presidents run for reelection.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That's what presidents do.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: At the same time, he is undoubtedly old.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: He's the oldest president that we've had.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And what he has always said is, I will run for reelection as long as I can.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: You know, he's a big believer in fate and he understands mortality and illness well, you know, having suffered through a number of tragedies in his own family.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It is true that he will sit down with his family after the midterms and have that final conversation.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: But here's one thing to know about Joe Biden.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: He takes a really long time to make this decision.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That was true when he's decided not to run in the past, if you look at the 2016 election.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And it's true when he decided to run in the past. If you look at the 2020 election.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So while I do think that we will likely get some sort of nod from the White House early next year, I would be surprised if they made it official in the first few weeks.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And what kind of result in November would lead to people telling him not to?
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: I think that there's basically no kind of result that would do that for this reason.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: A lot of the people who are around him, including himself, by the way, remember the 2010 elections really well.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: The 2010 elections were a historic wipeout for Democrats.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Obama called it a shellacking.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: He was chastened, he said, by the Republican gains.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: It was basically as bad a Democratic result as there had been in decades.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And then Obama won reelection two years later.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Things change quickly.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Joe Biden knows that.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Barack Obama knows that.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Everyone who works for Joe Biden knows that.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: And if anyone tries to say that a rough result this midterms should push him away from running for reelection.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: All he'll say is, I remember what happened 12 years ago.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: Why don't you guys?
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Well, Gabe, thank you so much again for all of your time.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: I really appreciate it.
--:-- Gabriel D. Benedetti: This has been a great conversation.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Yeah, of
