And now from the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and CNN Audio, The Axe Files, with your host, David Axelrod.

'This episode is going to be a little different than the normal Axe Files. I sat down at Arizona State University this week with two legendary political strategists Karl Rove, the architect of President George W Bush's campaigns, and David Plouffe, my partner and the brilliant manager of the 2008 Barack Obama campaign. You can find their personal stories and past podcasts on the Axe Files. But in this conversation, we talked the Biden-Trump rematch, which we all agreed is the most unusual campaign of our lifetimes. These guys are really two of the greatest political minds of our times. Guys, I just want to start off. We're in the midst of this really historic and momentous presidential race. And I just want your candid assessment of where we are right now. And I will offer mine, as well, so we can all be in trouble together. But, David, you want to start?

'Well, first, thanks for having us. Great to be with you, Karl. I, I personally always loved being in battleground states, and since you are a core battleground state here in Arizona now, that wasn't always in the case. It's just got a different feel in the air. And your electoral votes could be decisive this November. I think this is, a, you know, this is a fairly unprecedented election. We have basically two incumbents running against each other. That's not happened since the late 1890s. Karl is a historian, so I'll add more to that. So in our lifetimes, we haven't seen that. We also, you know, some of you in the audience may be very excited about one of the candidates, but the polling suggests that most Americans are not. They're not super excited about the choice that's in front of them. And, you know, when you think about that from a campaign perspective, and, you know, every American voter, the campaigns have a sense, they may be incorrect, but for the most part, they have a sense of what you're going to do based on extensive data and modeling and voter history. And so this is complicated, because you've got some people who might be historical voters who've never missed an election are thinking about not voting. You may have people thinking about flirting with a third party candidate. And most of the polling right now, and it's very early. We've got 100 lifetimes between now and November. Everyone should remember that. But, you know, has the race, let's say 45-44, 45-43, that that's in Arizona and nationally. And of course, that's not 100% of the vote. So we have a lot of voters hanging out there. Who are they? Right now, I think they're slightly look more like Biden voters than Trump voters. So that's good for Biden. But you've got a lot of particularly younger voters who aren't sure they're going to vote or vote third party. So, and we've got a lot going on in the world, and we've obviously got an economy where you still have interest rates quite high. People are still dealing with prices. Although inflation has come down, it's not like prices have reversed. We obviously have the Middle East, we have Ukraine. We're still living through the aftermath of a pandemic. So this is a a really fascinating stew of things. And at the end of the day, it's just worth reminding everybody. I think sometimes we overcomplicate this. The media certainly does. But even sometimes people in campaigns. This is going to come down to 2.5 million people, maybe, in six states. That's it. That even may be too many. That's it. Some of them here in Arizona, some of them in Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, maybe Georgia. That's it. And how those people make their decisions, both swing voters. There's not many of them, but there's enough of them to make a huge difference, even if it's 4% in state. And then turnout. And that's the last thing I'd say is I think that there's about half of the Republican Party right now I think you could say is MAGA. The rest aren't. So some of those people may flirt with Biden or third party. Some may not vote. But I think Trump has more intensity right now in his support than Biden does, and that's probably the thing that would concern me most as a Democrat is Biden's got to get that intensity level up, because in a race that's going to come down to, I don't know what'll Arizona be. Ten, 15, 20, 25,000 votes, you can't afford any leakage. So I think the most important demographic in this election, and there's many, but the most important one is younger voters, kind of the under the age of 28, let's say. What do they end up doing? Do they end up voting? Trump's doing a little bit better with them. He's going to get clobbered with them, but all he has to do is increase his vote share. And then of course, some of them are dancing and flirting with these third party candidates. And I think that's important, because I still think Trump has a hard time getting the 50% in Arizona and the other battleground states. But if in like '16, he can win these states in 47, 48%. So that I think is very much worth watching. Is is does RFK Jr.'s numbers stay where it is, which is 9 or 10? Historically, third party candidates float down over time. But we'll see, because this is, again, I think, a pretty unprecedented election.

'I agree with a lot of what David said. This is the only the second election in in history to have the loser facing the guy who beat him. And both of them are incumbents. 1892, the other time. Last time we had the candidate who lost facing the guy who beat him who's not an incumbent, was '56 with Stevenson and Dwight Eisenhower. So it's unusual. And I think David's absolutely right. This is going to end up being an election in which a handful of states, I'd add North Carolina onto the list, because Michigan was won by Biden last time around by slightly more, slightly larger percentage than Biden, than Trump won North Carolina. So I think that if the Democrats make a play for North Carolina, particularly because of some dynamics involving their gubernatorial election there, it's going to be, you know, advantageous for the Democrats to do so. In addition to young voters, I think he's absolutely right, whose enthusiasm level is low, I'd add three other groups of people who are going to be important in the election. African-American turnout is going to matter a lot. A 1% decline in Black turnout in the state of Georgia, and poof, Georgia's winning margin for Biden goes away. 1%. And then Latinos, where, you know, we speak about the Hispanic community, but it really is, there are Hispanic communities. And the difference in attitudes among various groups inside the Hispanic community. I mean, one of the reasons Florida is not a battleground state is because a Colombian American, Venezuelan American, Cuban Americans in South Florida have come to identify the Democratic Party as representing too much of what they and their forebears left, which is why that state is swung to the right. In Texas, we're seeing it in South Texas. We've never had in the history of Texas a Republican congressman for the Rio Grande Valley until now. And she's a Latina. We've never had state representatives for the Republicans from south of San Antonio. We now have four. One of them being a very prominent long time Democrat who switched parties. And it's because of lots of things, most emphatically, the border, but also energy, because the further west you get from the Gulf of Mexico, the deeper you get into energy country. And you have some guy who's a high school grad driving a truck with a CDL license in the energy patch making $110,000 a year and saying, one party's coming for my job and the other party isn't. So things are going on in the Hispanic community. And then I would add the double haters. David's right. This election is, we're sitting here saying, how did we get here? You know, one guy, one guy was too old and the other guy, the most common word to describe him in polls is corrupt. And people are saying, can we can we do better? And so, at the end of the day, how this campaign plays out on a day-to-day basis is going to affect how those people end up voting. You know, whether they vote for, you know, one of the two people that are on the major party ticket or whether they vote for a third party candidate or whether they can't, they don't vote at all. Arizona's like a lot of other states. Wisconsin. Best example. 60,000 people in 2020 voted for the Republican candidate for the state legislature and the Republican candidate for Congress, but did not vote for the Republican candidate for president. You know, you saw this a little bit here in the state in 2022 when the Republican candidate for state treasurer runs several hundred thousand votes ahead of other Republican candidates for governor and Congress. So my party's broken. And how that plays out in the election is going to be critical. At the end of the day, david's right. The third party role in this is going to be critical. 6% of the electorate cast a ballot for a third party candidate in 2016. Less than 2% did in 2020. And yet, in both elections. In 2016, the number of votes cast for Jill Stein in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania is larger than Hillary Clinton's losing margin. And in 2020, the votes cast for Jo, for Jo Jorgensen, for the Libertarian Party. Anybody heard of Joe before? Know what Joe does? She is a lecturer in psychology at Clemson University. She got more votes in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin than Donald Trump lost those states by. So the relief valve of the third parties is going to play a critical role in this election. Final note. I think David sort of alluded to this. Turnout is going to matter. And we've been in a secular period from '96 on, with a brief hiatus in 2012, of an ever increasing percentage of the voting age population voting presidential election to presidential election with a brief hiatus in 2012. I would not be surprised at all to see a significant decline in the percentage of the voting age population that turns out this fall, and certainly would not be surprised to see a decline in the voting age population casting ballot in the presidential elections. Because this is one where people are saying, I really don't want to vote for either one of them, but they each have their adherents in their own respective parties. But the people are going to decide the election, swing voters, sort of not necessarily in the middle of the electorate because they're all across the spectrum, but less inclined to pay attention to politics, less inclined to be involved in politics, less inclined to vote in primaries. I think those people are going to say, you know what? I got better things to do with my time.

You touched on this. It's a weird phrase. Double haters. If you want to be polite, you can say double doubters, but there are a whole bunch of people who have a negative view of both candidates. And back in 2016, Trump won that. Won that fight. In 2020, Biden, won that. I want you guys, from a strategic standpoint to talk about the benefits and the liabilities of incumbency. Trump bore that burden and had whatever advantage there was back in 2020, in the but now we're looking at a reverse enrolls. And to me, one of the interesting things is that right now and you guys kind of avoided the question a little bit, I'd say right now if you if we voted today, I would believe that Trump would probably win that election. But right now he's benefiting from being an insurgent and a challenger, complaining about the conditions that exist, taking advantage, cherry picking elements of his record that, you know, from the first three years basically. And he's benefiting from that. Is is incumbency an advantage, David, to Biden here, or is it a burden.

'Right now, I think it's more of a burden. Yeah. I mean, it's fascinating to watch Trump, because he talks about his presidency as if 2020 never happened. And he's trying to convince people basically the economy was great and it would have stayed great if China hadn't unleashed the virus. And of course, his, mismanagement, historically bad management in the pandemic, is one of the reasons he lost. So, you know, Biden will make that a point. But I think, you know, yeah, with inflation, with all the challenges in the world, you know, I think the question for Biden is right now, Trump is benefiting more from his incumbent period than Biden is. And I think the Biden campaign has to really center the choice of essentially, when it comes down to it, do you really want to go back to this? And I believe there are enough voters in every battleground state who do not, at the end of the day, want four more years of Trump. And so that is not about selling Biden's accomplishments. I think Biden on the campaign trail and in his ads, you know, should talk about what he did. But this is 95% contrast, right? Joe Biden himself, David and I both heard this a lot when we worked in the White House with him, likes to use the phrase, don't compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative. And that's what this election has to be. But it I think for a while they were very focused, understandably, because they're proud of that, as they should be, talking about their accomplishments. But that's not, I think, where voters are. They want to make they need to make a decision based on contrast. And the voters that will make that decision aren't super pumped about where we are today, right? So think about infrastructure. I think when Biden talks about infrastructure, the way I would think about doing it is, of course, you can say, listen, Trump talked about doing roads and bridges and ports for four years. Never got it done. I got it done. You know why I got it done? Is because I was willing to round up Republican votes to get it done. Trump is just going to be focusing on rounding up Democrats, his political opponents, investigating and putting him in jail. That matters to people, because people don't want to go back to the chaos and the circus. So I think, David, right now, it's a dis--I think it's it's not helping Biden, but I think he's got to basically do a better job in the campaign, and they've got time to do this, of basically reminding people about what Trump's four years were like. And it wasn't just the pandemic, it was all the distractions and all the attacks and some of its policy trying to get rid of health care. He's talking about doing that again, which would throw 20 million people off of health care. He's talking about cutting taxes for billionaires again. Obviously, young people care very much about climate change, as a lot of voters do. He wants to roll all that back. So there's you can prosecute that. But for me, the big thing is you basically have to center this as, do you really want to do this again? Do you want to take a risk on him another four years of that, which is not going to be about your family or your job. It's going to be about him. And I think that's what's got to get done. And, you know, advertising a big part of that. But the biggest thing actually, I think has to be average people making that case on TikTok, on Instagram, on Facebook. And I think the Biden folks I think ought to embrace a little bit and even Biden himself to, to say, listen, I get that not everyone is excited about this choice. I get that, but it's a choice we have to make. Like, you have to meet people where they are. And, you know, maybe it is not double haters, but this election will be decided both in terms of swing voters and those younger voters in particular who aren't sure they're going to vote. Almost all of them are going to be holding their nose to do what Joe Biden needs them to do. And I think you have to understand that.

Well, you only need one hand free to vote, so that's good. Karl, Karl, I want to pick up on something David said. That Biden has this card to play, which is that he has been able to work more effectively than, than Trump across party lines and so on. I thought the State of the Union speech was interesting, because he did what he needed to do. At the time that Biden made that State of the Union speech, the Democratic Party was in something of a panic about his energy level and his ability to fight and so on. But the price of that speech was that he kind of threw away the bipartisanship card, at least for that night. Tell me what you think biden's ability to reach those voters, Republican voters, not independents, and particularly not the Democrats who voted for Nikki Haley in the primary and some others. But what does he need to do to reach those voters?

Yeah. First, let me take one thing that's sort of touched on in passing. I agree with a lot of what David had to say. There's an interesting thing from my perspective about 2020, though. You're right. Trump is sort of benefiting from people saying everything up to 2020. In a way that's normal, because we look at 2020 and it's sort of like, you know, that's such an extraordinary event. People don't hold him responsible for it. Sort of like it emerged, we all tried to do our best, and some of it worked, some of it didn't work. Governors played a bigger role, I think, in the minds of voters and the response in individual states. But I think that one of the things that Trump has benefiting from is, is that you can't say, well, he did such a terrible job in 2020. Because I don't think they hold him responsible for it, and therefore they also underate, if you will, the response of the country to it. I mean, we we went into a deep hole in 2020, and we come roaring economically out of it in 2021. And yet there's no or little or no advantage to Biden. And I think it's because people say organically, look, the virus put us in a hole and we pulled ourselves out. Now, fair or unfair, I think that's one of the reasons why he's got a problem. Now, to to your question. Yes, I think that was a mistake. I mean, I know he had a problem. Was he up toe it? Could he deliver, you know, a cogent speech with power and passion? But I thought it was a problem in engaging in such a highly partisan way. This was his last big shot before the Democratic convention to to create a narrative with the American people and dominate the stage for a week or two and set a course. And I don't think he did it. I mean, yes, people stopped saying, well. I can't remember which one of you were talking about bedwetters. It stopped the Democratic.

Plouffe actually has trademarked.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Oh that's right. I guess I have to give you 20 bucks every time use it. Let me get my wallet out. But, you know, look, I think it goes back before the State of the Union address. I think last year was a mistake because a president, the most powerful thing a president has, his ability to have this giant megaphone to shape a narrative. And 2022 was spent saying, Bidenomics is working. And, you know, I think it was you who said if you go to a marketing class, if you got a bad product, don't put your name on it. Bidenomics was not working in the mindset of most ordinary Americans. Yeah, the jobs were coming back. And yes, inflation was starting to moderate. But the American family is having to deal with the consequences of three years of inflation and of a decline in me and mean median mean household income. So it's about a 23, 24% delta between what they used to be able to pay out of their pocket and get and what happens today. And we all deal with it when we go to the grocery store. So last year was spent saying, I've succeeded, Bidenomics is is working, everything's returning to normal. Everything is great. Rather than we've got important work to do. We're making a we're making some progress, but I know the biggest difficulty is helping Americans adjust to this new reality, that the prices are higher and the paychecks don't stretches as far.

We're going to take a short break and we'll be right back with more of The Axe Files. And now back to the show. Let me throw this to you, David, because you and I lived this together back in 2012 when Barack Obama was running. And what we discovered pretty quickly was no matter how much objective progress we were making, it didn't matter if people weren't feeling it. And, what people have continue to feel now is not the effect of what inflation is today, but the cumulative impact of inflation. And even in the State of the Union, the president talked about the strongest economy in the world. I think that's objectively true. I think he had and I think he deserves more credit than he gets for that. But isn't it politically? You said earlier something that you know is something that I believe deeply. You gotta link up with people where they live. Doesn't he lose people by not saying, look, we're we got this ongoing fight, and that fight is to make to bring down the cost of living? And this is, you know, that's why I did this and this, and that's why we have to go after the price gouging laws and why we have to go after people who are unduly rolling up rents and, you know, all of that stuff. Isn't that more effective?

Yeah. Well, what you learn is, voters, particularly the voters that will decide elections, they don't think about the economy through the prism of any government statistics. Right?

Right.

It's their own statistic. Right? So, I mean, we even found in Barack Obama's reelection in 2012, he got reelected with the highest unemployment rate I believe any president has got reelected at. But it was coming down. So people felt good on trajectory. But even things that were undeniably positive, that that the stock market had rebounded, was a reason to vote against him for some voters, because, you know, that voters don't aren't in the market, and a lot of voters are like, well, that seems like that's gotten better than my own life, right? And this is a financial crisis. So you it's it's really hard for incumbents. Because incumbents, they get things done, they pass legislation, they're proud of it. They see the statistics. But you can't tell a voter who's not feeling economically secure they should feel economically secure. That's never worked. So I think the way Karl put it right, which is listen, we were in a huge hole after the pandemic. I've done some things, you know, infrastructure, built roads and bridges and a lot of jobs. You know, we're making our tax code more fair. We're investing in Arizona, a great story around all the green energy investments. The CHIPs act here is probably the best example of that with what Intel's doing. But we have a lot more work to do. You know, I understand that when you go to the grocery store, you're paying more. Your wages haven't gone up. If you don't say that, people are just going to think you're out of touch. And I think particularly for Biden, where there's a sense, just given his age, how rooted is he in my life? That that's a problem. So that's exactly right. I mean, I think that, you know, we get criticized some David, you and I personally, and certainly overall effort in 2012 for not sort of taking more victory laps on behalf of what had happened. But we couldn't do that because voters weren't willing to go that far.

By the same people that are urging Biden to do the same.

Yes.

Right. Yeah. And look, the other thing is, is that the infrastructure bill was not the administration initiative. He signed it, don't get me wrong. But this came about because the Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Transportation Committee saying we need to reauthorize the highway trust fund. And while we're at it, can we do infrastructure? You may remember at one point, the White House was saying, we really don't want the infrastructure bill to move ,because we're right now because we're worried that it might undermine support for Build Back Better, whatever the hell was. The same on the CHIPs act. The CHIPs act occurs because a freshman Republican senator from Indiana finds out that he shares a common concern with the Democrat, senior member of the head of the Senate Intel Committee, about what would happen if Taiwan was was taken by the Chinese and the source of 90% of our chips was was suddenly gone. Now, it strikes me that last year was the year to say what I'm now going to say, but it could have been in the State of the Union address. The president would have looked bigger had he said, I want to compliment Todd Young, Republican of Indiana, and Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, for taking the leadership on this. And I want to compliment the Senate Democrats and Republicans for coming together in a unanimous vote to to pass out the infrastructure bill. And instead, what we got was, you know, his thing, Biden is working. So the message discipline out of the White House is problematic.

So I have to say, we spent a lot of time together. Karl and I do a lot of events together, and I do notice, and I noted it last time, that you're pretty generous with assigning Biden responsibility for things that have not gone well. Karl's right that these bills were the, in part, the result of earnest efforts on the part of Republicans and Democrats. It also helps to have a president who understands that process, who knows when to intervene and when not to intervene. His secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, was deeply involved in the CHIPs negotiations. You know, so.

Yeah. Can I can I play off that? I think you're absolutely right. And I don't fault, you know, I don't fault him for signing the bills. What I fault him for is not being big and saying.

No, I just, I don't disagree with you. I don't disagree with you on that. There's another thing that, that you said, though, that I think is sort of central to this. And I'm going to get to President Trump in a second here, because it's it's interesting to me that in all of our recitations about things that are going to determine this election, no one's mentioned the fact that he is under four separate indictments and could and is going to be tried on one of them, apparently in April and may be tried on others. And how might that affect us? I want to ask about that. But on the Biden side, I don't think I'm giving away a state secret here by saying age has been an issue, for for him and continues to be an issue. And the way age translates is weakness. That's how. The Republican argument is the world is out of control and Biden is not in command. David, so issues like the border, I picked up the wars, even though I think he's prevailed, provided sort of stout leadership on those issues. I was reading what I, I still force a habit call the paper this morning.

What is that?

Yes, I have to explain it to young people all the time. It's that thing we used to have at our door, and we'd pick it up and we'd read it over breakfast and so on. But I was reading about this ISIS incursion in Moscow, and my first reaction to that was, this is not good for Biden, because anything that contributes to the idea that the world's out of control, it'll certainly be, you know, opponents will say, well, Afghanistan, that's the reason this happened and so on. But how do you combat that?

Well, you know, it is. Politics is somewhat like the Serenity Prayer. I mean, there's some things you can't control. So what you better do is control everything you can control, quality of your campaign, crispness of your message, allocation of resources, how to use technology better than your opponent. So I agree with that. I do think that, first of all, in age, Biden has embraced this a little bit more recently. He was, I think it was Seth Meyers late night show recently and said, hey, we're both basically old white guys. So I just think he's got to lean in. You got to meet people where they are. Say, listen, I get that a lot of Americans aren't excited about this choice, in part because, you know, I'm 80 and my opponent's almost 80. I get that, like, you got to embrace Trump. Trump voters don't see him as old as Biden, in part because he's got that feral quality. You know, and Biden, I think physically, we do live in a visual world. I mean, I think most people who are trying to communicate messages, I would argue in politics, certainly in the private sector, you've got to think visual first, short form video and and pictures. And I think Trump has a slight advantage there, which is surprising. So I think that but Biden is campaigning more. I think I think they they do have to be like, I'd like him to go out there himself and talk about what happened in Russia. I think, you know, he came down to Texas the same day Trump did on the border, talked about the fact that we had a border deal. Senate Republicans agreed to a border deal. Trump killed it. That's good to do. But you got to stay with that and stay with that.

Shouldn't that have been sooner than it should have been? It was three weeks after.

It should have been sooner. There should have been ads on it. I mean, listen, the border is a real problem. I don't need to tell you guys that. I mean, I believe that there was one day at the end of December of last year, more people crossed on that one day than all of 2010 combined. So it's a real problem and it's it's challenging our cities. So yes, I think you can say the Republicans could have contributed to fixing it, and many of them did, to Karl's point, to be generous. But Trump came in and prevented that. But you've got to understand, it's a real problem that is affecting a lot of communities. So I think you're going to have to be more astride these problems, because I do think that's the issue, which is, is he up to this? Now, I think you can prosecute Trump and say, we know that he's not. A, because he's only going to think about himself.

Well, that's.

You know, he's out of control. And and we'll see. I mean, listen, I don't know what to say about these indictments other than the polling suggests if he gets convicted on any of them, there's like a quarter of the vote that says that might matter to them. That's not insignificant in an election is close.

Yeah. I just I want to get to that point. But, I do think that what what what he has to contend with, and I do think it involves getting much more comparative, is this sense that because people have concluded by what they see in front of a camera that he's not engaged, that when good things happen, they said, well, he didn't drive, that would have happened anyway. When bad things happen, they say, well, it's because he's not engaged. And that that that is something that he, that he has to defeat. Let me just make one point, Karl. And then and then go. I do think that, Bill Clinton once said the future, all elections are about the future, that presidential elections are about the future. I think Biden can make a compelling case that the things he's worked on are about building a better future, and it's a future that I think a lot of people can identify with. And he can make the case that Trump is very much consumed by his past and that he is not going to, he's going by vengeance, by retribution, but not by the day to day problems of people. And I think that would be a productive, productive way to go. But, Karl, what about the trials? And I mean, how much of a liability? It seemed a couple of years ago, if you would have said, yeah, you got a presidential candidate's got 91 counts against him in four different indictments, that might be a problem.

Not in the age we live in, apparently. Hey, can I quicky.

Yes, sure. Of course.

It would. I think David's hit a good point about. This was a mistake, in my opinion, on Trump's part on killing the deal, because it gives Biden a chance to do exactly what David suggested. A smarter move would have been for him to say, okay, fine. Pass it. It's about. It's a day late and a dollar short. You should have been doing this years ago. And there are 4 or 5 things, Remain in Mexico, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Here are four things that are not in the bill that I'll do when we get into office, which would have made it more about the future. Who do you want to tackle this problem in the future? And instead, he's opened himself up to now the question is going to be, can Biden make an effective case of here's what we would have had had he not done this? And we'll see. Yeah. This is really odd. I mean, think about it. We've never been in this place. I will say that I think we had in 2016 and I, the dean may disagree with this, with me on this, because he's a polling expert and I'm a consumer. We we had the shy Trump voter. We had somebody who said it's socially unacceptable to say I'm for Donald Trump, and I've gotten a phone call from somebody that I don't know what the what what's the, you know, Applied Research Corporation or whatever. And I don't know who this person is. And they're asking me who I am for, for president. And so I'm going to say that I'm not for Donald Trump. And that's maybe why he looked like he overperformed. We may have to reverse this time round. And I take my lesson in this from the National Opinion Research Center poll in June, in which they said, here are the four indictments. Are they, is the indictment justified? Is it justified but politically motivated? Or do you not have enough information in order to form an opinion? And 16% of Republicans on every one of the four: New York business case, Jack Smith insurrection case, Georgia RICO case, classified documents, at least 16% of Republicans said it's justified. But between 24 and 31% of Republicans said, I don't have enough information to form an opinion, which is complete and utter baloney. Yes they did. They just didn't want to share it. So if I were Trump, I'd be worried about. We do have several polls that have indicated that if he's found guilty on something, in, you know, in, you know, sort of the abstract that people will not vote for him. Both some Republicans and some measure of swing or independent voters. Now, the proof will be in the pudding. What is exactly he found guilty of? And do we think it's fair? And and realistically, I mean, Fani Willis really did a bad thing. She caused, whether you believe that's accurate or not, we now look as a country and say something phony was going on in Atlanta, Georgia, because she hired the boyfriend and made him a special prosecutor and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But this is a problem for him, and I think it may show up in reality and not show up necessarily in the polls because, again, we're in it's such a tribal moment that you're attacking the guy of my who's leading my tribe. Democrat and Republican. And so, you know, it's I'm not going to I'm not going to tell the anonymous pollster where I am on this. But I do think when it comes to the indictments, if he's found guilty on something, it could be very problematic.

Well, yeah, he believes that, too, because he's worked hard to try and push these trials.

And also he has been consistent. I'm the victim. This has been weaponized. There's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Joe Biden has done anything to tell the Department of Justice what to do. And yet every fundraising email you get from him is Biden is weaponize the DOJ.

Well, it's kind of interesting, because you have to ride one horse or the other. You on the one hand, they say Biden can organize a two car funeral. And on the other hand, he's masterminding this.

Exactly. He's capable of both somehow.

David, I want to ask you. You are. I mean, one of the reasons our campaigns were so effective was you were focused like a laser on technology. And it's laughable now, thinking about what the technology was like in 2008. I mean, but we used it to great advantage to organize, to communicate with, with voters. You know, Twitter was just in its infancy. TikTok didn't exist, and so on. It is an entirely different world now. By 2012, by the way, we had, what, 57 or something data analytics people? No one would have thought of that in 2008. Talk about where we are now and how much of this campaign is churning below the surface of what we see on the nightly news.

Almost all of it, because the people who will decide the election are not consuming the nightly news. They're not reading newspapers. I mean, some are, but most aren't. And you just have to step back. So the two and a half to 3 million people in the seven states, if you if you include North Carolina, maybe that's more like 3.2 million. You know, you can know the life they live as it relates to how they consume information. Okay. So that's what you have to do as a campaign. I need to build a strategy that's consistent with how those people. So some of them you might be able to reach with television advertising, radio advertising, but most of them are living their lives on TikTok, Instagram Reels, to a lesser extent, Facebook. Twitter, now X, is really kind of the province of the elites for the most part. A lot of the voters that won't decide this election are on there. So you need to think, by the way, local news still plays an important role. And of course, most local news here in Phoenix and elsewhere, you know, they think almost first about social media. They've got their broadcast. Right. So that's important local television news. So you've got to fashion a strategy for. Now on Instagram and Facebook, you can run ads. On TikTok, you actually can't. So that's all organic and influencer driven. But you have to understand. And you know, I still love the long written word that is fairly useless in today's political world. I would even, in consumer world. It's that quick visual. It's that meme. It's who's saying it. And so it's clever language. Right. So I think that's the challenge and opportunity. And what's interesting is Trump, even though he's almost 80, seems to kind of have a reflexive understanding of this. He use social media better than Clinton did in 16. I think the gap narrowed in 20. So that'll be an important question is which candidate, which campaign gets that? You know, Biden himself is starting to appear in TikToks. He doesn't have his own channel. I'm happy to see that I'm doing more on Instagram.

We should, for disclaimer purposes, you advise.

I advise TikTok, but the reality is. So if you're thinking about, okay, Trump wants to repeal the ACA, or I want to talk about the chaos, or I want to respond to something that happened in his trial, or I want to drive a contrast on infrastructure. I want to have something funny to say about how we're both old. You don't think anymore, in my view, about the speech you're going to give or the interview ou're going to give, which is what is our TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. What's the meme? Right? And that's a huge change. I mean, our campaigns, David, it was the World Wide Web in 08. By 12, Facebook had become more important. Facebook is still a place where a healthy number of swing voters, older swing voters, get information, but it's declining. So it's these other platforms. You know, a lot of young people are on things like telegram, which is from Russia. They're on discord. Again, the thing about this to understand is it's all knowable. If you know who you're trying to reach, you can back that up and say, how are they getting information? And you better construct a campaign that nots trying to reach somebody in a way that's not consistent with how they're living their life. Right? People don't say, well, this is how I'm living the rest of my life. I'm going to kind of veer out of that for politics. You'll never reach them that way. So that, I think, is the opportunity. The challenge is it's, the presidential microphone even, has been completely disaggregated. It's not as powerful as it once was. You got to build it back up. So that to me is the important thing to understand as you're thinking about here in Arizona, in North Carolina, in Michigan, in Pennsylvania, the voters that will decide this election are not in the New York Times story. They're not watching Rachel Maddow. They're not watching Sean Hannity. They're largely influenced by influencers. And that doesn't just have to be Taylor Swift. It could be somebody their own age or their, who works in their same industry, who says something that says, oh, that makes sense in.

One of our, and Karl, I'll get right to it. One of the things that we discovered with Facebook was that we did much better when people were contacting friends on Facebook and conveying material to them than if we as a campaign were conveying material to them because they they trusted their friends more than they trusted us. We're going to take a short break and we'll be right back with more of The Axe Files. And now, back to the show. Karl, what were you going to say?

Yeah, I got two questions. One for you and one for you. So back to that. Did you send them the material and ask them to convey it?

Yeah, we shared material with them and they shared, but we also asked them to contact people directly around Election Day and so on and leading up to it, urging them to vote. We were aware of people saying, you know, whether they had voted on Election Day.

Didn't you have also. I think they no longer allowed this, but you you were able to identify the Facebook supporters of Obama. You could identify people in their address book who are your target voters?

Yeah, they turn that off after 2012, but it was a huge advantage for us. So if I was. Like my sister who lived in Ohio, did this. She's like, I have six friends, three in Florida, three in Ohio, who haven't voted. Like, it was wildly effective.

So the question for you, on the influencers, how do you organize the influencers? You know, let's say you get some people on TikTok who are influencers, but, I mean, how does a campaign organize them and deploy them in a systematic fashion? Or is it just sort of we got to hope that they pick it up and run with it?

It's kind of half and half, I think, you know, I'm sure Trump's campaign is doing this, I know the Biden campaign does this. They meet with influencers on Reels, Instagram, influencers on YouTube. I should have mentioned YouTube. Still really important place. Wildly important, actually, for young people. TikTok. They'll meet with influencers, say, hey, prior to the State of the Union, this is what we're going to stress. Or let's bring some influencers in who care about climate change. But I think a lot of it's going to happen organically. And the best things, to David's point, happen organically. Because people can sniff out propaganda. But if somebody says something in a way like, I hadn't thought about that or I find that interesting and I'm going to share that. So I think you organize what you can, but you also need to.

Take advantage of what's out there.

Have a belief in just organic virality. And this is where passion comes in, because if people feel passionate about it, someone will go out there and spend an extra 15 minutes of their busy day, you know, making an interesting video. If they don't, they won't. And I'm concerned about that.

'Let me ask you guys about money. You know, there was a time, Karl, when Democrats began elections with the presumption that they were going to be outspent, that, the Republican Party had a better, deeper pockets and people willing to spend. That's sort of reversed now because of the power of online fundraising and because of the change in the nature of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, and where their bases are. There are well-to-do Democrats now who are willing to spend money. Right now, Biden has, what, $100 million advantage on cash on hand or something like.

Well, he's got, I think, $115 million in his campaign and the DNC to less than half that for Trump and the RNC.

So I want to ask both of you what you think that that means, because Trump also apparently is going to divert some of this money, or at least money that's going to his super PAC, some of this money to legal expenses.

Yeah. So the first $6,600 goes to his primary account, 3300. And then the general election one, and then the next $5,000 goes to Save America, which has put out $71 million towards his legal fees. Now, fortunately, as I read.

This is a pretty good thing for any of you who intend to be indicted. David. You the the the money issue, how significant will that be?

There are some exceptions to this, but I think generally money matters most when you have candidates who are less well known, because you can define yourself and your opponent. These are universally known people. And so I think money will matter less in the presidential than you might see in a race where you've got to, let's say it's an open seat governor's race, and one of them is neither of them are well known, and somebody raises a lot more money. So they define themselves, their opponent, what the race is about. But in a race that's going to be this close, you want the resources to do everything you think you need to do to win. And right now, I think, because Trump's not going to put any of his own money in, we know that. He's never going to do that. That's the one thing we can be sure of.

I may be in support of your point, but it may sound like a slight dissent. I agree, if you put this on television, it matters more for the person attacking somebody. And that's, Biden has to attack Trump. But when it comes to the ground game, we do know from scientific research done by academics, unfortunately at Yale, and other places that this does have an effect on, you know, having somebody knock on the door and call them on their cell phone, text them a message. You know, it has an impact. And so the Democrats, if they deploy this money, are going to have a bigger advantage. They also have an advantage that the Republican Party in battleground states, the parties are in shambles. In Nevada, Arizona, lovely thing you've had going on here, Wisconsin. You know, Ohio is okay. Michigan was an utter disaster. They literally are broke. All of the computers were taken out of the headquarters by the previous leadership. They don't know, they're still fighting over the bank accounts. They don't even control the website. And so we're, you know, seven months from an election and in critical battleground states, the Republican Party is in trouble, and money can solve that problem if we had it, and it can give the Democrats a decided advantage on the get out the vote.

'Yeah, I would just say yeah. So but so in Arizona, in Michigan, in Pennsylvania, you know, let's say a campaign says, here's the ten things we really need to do to reach this cohort of voters. And if Biden can do ten of them and Trump can do seven of them, that is a decisive advantage. But it's not going to mitigate the big thing. So let's say Biden has a great first debate with Trump. If they debate, and I have a big question whether Trump will do that. I mean, if I were the Biden campaign, that first debate is so important, because it's the best opportunity he has, much more than a State of the Union or even the convention, to show him up for this, right? I mean, if Trump says I'll only debate at Mar-A-Lago with Sean Hannity as a moderator, I would be there. So money is not.

You would do that if you were Biden?

Yes. Biden has to debate. I believe that so strongly.

You heard what he, you heard what he said in response to the question. He said, well, it depends on how he behaves. Now, if that's the index by which they're going to make the decision, then he's he's not going to debate.

Biden needs that debate. Money is not going to, you know, is not going to change the big things economy, bad debate performance, good debate, performance, indictments. But what it can do is on the margins in battleground states, if you've got the advantage. And, you know, of course it's malpractice what's happening. And this is all Trump. I mean, so many of these state party fights, lack of fundraising, that basically pilfering money from people to pay for his legal defense. It's outrageous. And by the way, you know, that the RNC and state parties, I mean, they will do what Trump thinks is in his best electoral interests. But the shame is the rest of these Republican candidates down ballot are going to get hosed and not have the resources that they need.

Let me just ask you, you mentioned Nevada. You mentioned Arizona. There is already, I think, on the ballot in Nevada a abortion rights initiative. I think there's an effort to get it on the on the ballot here. Karl, I'll ask you both. Back in 2004, there were gay marriage initiatives on, I think, 11 and 11 states, 11,13, something like that, including Ohio, which was a particularly strong, strongly competitive state. Do you guys think that that on the ballot will, help bring some of these younger voters and be a factor in the outcome in these states?

'It could. And listen, I think particularly in Nevada, I'm very concerned about that state. I mean, that has been trending more and more away from the Democratic Party. And I think if you look at, that is probably the best example of a state where if Trump can make inroads with non-college, particularly male, African-American and Hispanic voters, that's where it's going to be. So, yeah, I think anywhere that you give, particularly in an election where people like I'm not thrilled about the choice, I'm not sure if I'm going to vote. You get them, you give them a reason to come. Now, if you're the the Biden campaign, you got to make sure they just don't vote on that. You got to make sure they vote in the presidential race. But yeah, I think it can be very, very.

And Karl, that it did bring out evangelical voters in 2004.

You know, I've seen this theory, it's not borne out. If you take a look at the states in which there was a gay marriage referendum on the ballot in 2004, and compare the difference in turnout, the increase in turnout from 2000 to 2004. It's essentially the same as states without a referendum. And really, did we want the election to be about gay marriage?

Well what about this?

I'm trying to figure this out. First of all, I think it does bring out, at least we've seen in off year elections it's increased turnout, but, will it in a presidential election year? And second of all, let's be clear. This is an issue that has conflicting currents in it. Two thirds of the American people did not want Roe v Wade overturned. And two thirds of the American people do not want abortions in the second or third trimester. Everybody pointed to Virginia last fall, said, oh, in the off year elections in Virginia, the Republicans failed to take the Virginia House of delegates and the Virginia State Senate, showing thereby the failure of Republicans on the abortion issue. No. Republicans did have advertising on the abortion issue for about three weeks, and they took every state house of delegates district that Joe Biden carried by ten points or less, and every Democrat state senate district that Joe Biden carried by nine points or less. If the abortion issue would have been cutting against him, then they would have been losing districts that Donald Trump carried instead of winning. Think about what would happen if the United States Senate and the U.S. House, if we had a shift of that big? Of every Democrat who won election by less than ten points being wiped out in a race for the US House? So we got to be careful. I think it will bring out turnout. I think you're right. It will bring a youthful turnout. I'm not certain it's going to have a dispositive affect.

But let me ask you, going out here, and this is a very broad question, but what is the single most important factor that will determine this election?

Debates and how they perform. And if we don't have them, who gets blamed for not having them. This could be just like 1980. We have one debate between Carter and Reagan. The polls show that Reagan was competitive, but large number of undecideds, and the debate went Reagan'sm Reagan's way. This is where Carter said, I'm talking to my 14 year old daughter about nuclear weapons. And Reagan hammered two points: are you better off today than you were four years ago? And I was the governor of California. And people said, you know what may take a risk, but he seems to, you know, he was the governor of the most populous state in the Union, and I'm not better off today than I was four years ago.

I agree with that. It debates. And so subcategory is just performance. You know, does one of them have like an awful senior moment? Right. Is there a physical stumble beyond what we've seen from both of them? But if that doesn't happen, then it's the debate. And I think it's going to be far less, quite frankly, what they say than than how they say it, particularly for Biden.

Well, Trump has his own liability. You talk about younger voters. We've got a war in the Middle East that has on this campus, many campuses, fomented a lot of dissent and debate and outrage. Just how much will the outcome of that or the state of that conflict in November, as well as how the war in Ukraine ends if it ends before November, how much are those going to influence the vote?

Well, I think we know. I mean, the Iraq war was an exception to this. That was a big part of our election in 08. But I think that most voters are not going to put foreign policy, even some of these conflagrations at the top. But they matter. So let's say the war comes to a close. How it comes to a close with Russia and Ukraine is important, but Biden can say, I led, you know, with a steady hand and rallied our allies. If it's still going on, even though I don't think that's going to drive a lot of vote, most voters do not think we should give Vladimir Putin whatever he wants and the ability to reassemble the USSR, which is basically what Trump said we should do.

What about the Middle East and younger voters?

Well, that's going to be a huge challenge. I mean, I think that because these election battleground states are so close, all it would take is 5% of younger voters saying, I'm either not going to vote or vote third party to tip some of these states to Trump. And so it's a real challenge for the White House to navigate. Now, of course, we just had the United Nations with a unanimous resolution today. Netanyahu's now saying they're not going to come to Washington for a visit. I think at the end of the day, of the two conflicts and what's most important is obviously the substantive nature of it, but the one that has the most ability, I think, to alter this election outcome is certainly the Middle East.

Karl?

'Yeah, I think it is going to be weird cross-cutting. The Democrats are going to have a problem with the war because there's going to be. Chicago this summer, third week of August is going to have a lot of protests about it. Similarly, on the Republican side, I think Ukraine is a is a is an issue that could have a big impact. Think about this. What's the largest, ethnic group in the state of Wisconsin? Polish, who are strongly pro Ukrainian aid. So if the Republicans screw up Ukrainian aid, they're going to have a problem inside their own party with people saying, you know what? I really don't want Putin to threaten my home country or to threaten Europe. So both parties are facing. Democrats bigger, because it's more obvious and it has to do with young voters and a modest decline. But in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Ukrainian aid is going to be an issue that could hurt Republicans.

My concern very much is about sort of the social media ization of our politics. The business model of social media is to keep people online. They're not making political judgments. They're not trying to steer people for the advantage of a political party. They just want people to stay online. And the great inspiration of these algorithms is that anger, resentment, outrage, conspiracy, keeps people online and we get shoved into our silos and the information we get is filtered according to our preferences. And every so our views are affirmed, but not necessarily informed. And everyone outside the silo is is an enemy, not just someone who has a different point of view. And we have to be aware of that. I think there are reforms. I don't know, you're affiliated with, with with one of the platforms. But I'd like to know more about these algorithms. I think we should be much more transparent about what's happening. But, politics is now mirroring what the platforms are doing. So, you know, why is is is, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has no caloric content, why is she why is she one of the great fundraisers in the Republican Party? Because she's sort of social media incarnate. She plays to outrage. And I think this is a big challenge. And, I mean, one of the reasons I wanted these guys together is that it is important to say we can have real differences and still have a conversation, that I don't have to disqualify Karl Rove as a guy who cares about the country because he and I have different points of view, and I think we don't model that enough today for young people and for ourselves. But anyway, I got on the soapbox. Sorry.

My own college age son will ask, I just, work, what can I trust, you know? So he spends he goes to the BBC sometimes just because that's the place that he has found. So I think there are reforms we can we can make around how these companies operate. But at the end of the day, the human beings, at least for a period of time, have more control than the machines. And I think it's going to have to come to behavior change. So I think. And what, sadly, you can't wait for any older generation. We failed in this regard. There ain't no cavalry coming, it's you guys. So it takes a whole bunch of things. One is, you know, maybe you are a partisan, Democrat or a Republican. Right now when somebody in, in, in one of the parties works with the other side, they get castigated, excoriated. I mean, some of the Republican senators who worked on the border control deal, their state Republican parties are passing resolutions saying they'll never get their support. Like, we have to live this and say, you know what? Even though I don't understand what that person's doing, I respect them because they must think it's the right thing to do. We need a lot more people to run for office. Not as a career, but as a tour of duty. Go work in a prosecutor's office, in a in a mayor's office, in a state legislature for two, four, six years. Right. Because then you'll just call it like you see it. I mean, that is what one of the insidious things is. And by the way, what's interesting is like serving in Congress is not the greatest job in the world, yet I'd say 90% of them, they say the one thing they couldn't abide, their life would be empty, is if they lost. Right? And since almost all of them have to worry about primaries, not general elections, they cater a lot of that through social media. Right. But and we see with reality TV, I mean, that's what is driving ratings. The most popular shows in America, reality TV, social media has a big part to play in it. But at the end of the day, it's on all of us, and I think particularly your generation to say we're going to do this differently. By the way, that may mean that there are more third party candidates. It may be there's more third parties. The truth is, it's not natural that that all the voters of the Republican Party fit under one party or Democrat, like if we were in Europe, they'd be 5 or 6 parties. It's hard to argue that we haven't had some degree of market failure, as much as I believe in my party. So I think what is not going to work is it's thinking that some older group of elected officials is going to is going to make any progress on this, much less perfect it. You guys have to do this, right? And and so that's a lot of pressure on you. But at the end of the day, you've been handed some good things and a lot of bad things by those that have come before you. But I just think at the end of the day, too many American vote and yes, social media can fuel this. But again, we're human beings, and I think it's worse in some elements of the Republican Party, the Democratic Party. But it's there. It's become so tribal. It is, I hate you. And we see this in research. Voters have said, hey, this Demcroat said this, let's say you're a Republican voter. It's awful. And then a Republican said this. And they say, well, actually, that makes some sense. And it's the same thing on the Democratic side. It's it's become so toxic. And so at the end of the day, I think we'll still have elections. But that is my greatest concern, is we don't have a shared sense of truth. I'd say 80 to 85% of the country really does think the other party's out to do damage. And in some cases they are. So I think it's a it's a mix of things, Axe, but I think at the end of the day, citizens and voters have to do a better job of policing this.

Karl, last word.

I share David's concern about social media, and, we've sort of provoked each other into reading more about this. I wish I could say that I've come across a good answer, but I really do worry about it, particularly what it's doing to the socialization of our children. But, and I hear what David says about the parties and market failure, and our parties are broken, but they've been broken before. I have a certain amount of optimism, though, because I see these men and women who are serving in Congress and in state government, and I'm impressed with those that are saying I'm done. You know, I'm done with the politics as normal. How many of you are happy with the state of American politics today? Anybody? Well guess what. Most members of the.

Let the record show, since this is a podcast, that no one raised their hand.

Yeah, You talked to most members of Congress. They didn't go there to be, you know, judged by how many times they get on MSNBC or Fox or how many retweets they get. They went there to try and get something done for their state or their country and, we're seeing it. We saw it in the infrastructure bill. We saw it in the CHIPs bill. We saw it on the, I hate to say it against the interest of your client, on a China select committee, on TikTok, we saw it on, you know, on the Senate and Senate on the immigration attempt to reform. I just think that we're getting to a point where wherever this whatever this has happened in American politics before, we get to a point where people say enough is enough. And our leaders hear the message, and the country changes. And I'm confident that's going to happen. It may not happen this time. It may take until 2028. We may see it in 2026. But it always happens that America and Americans stand up and say we deserve to have better.

Karl Rove, David Plouffe, I said at the beginning, they are generational geniuses when it comes to this process, and they're also very passionate about this country. And I'm proud to call you guys my friends and so grateful that you're here today.

Thank you for listening to The Axe Files, brought to you by the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and CNN Audio. The executive producer of the show is Miriam Finder Annenberg. The show is also produced by Saralena Barry, Jeff Fox, and Hannah Grace McDonald. And special thanks to our partners at CNN, including Steve Lickteig and Haley Thomas. For more programing from the IOP, visit politics dot uChicago dot edu.