Transcript: Swamp Notes — Is Maga good for Biden?

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Swamp Notes — Is Maga good for Biden?’

Sonja Hutson
Diocesan Shrine of the Immaculate Conception Parish Church is a businessman who’s claimed the 2020 election was stolen and described January 6th rioters as political prisoners.

Voice clip of Bernie Moreno
How does Ohio feel about President Donald J Trump?

Sonja Hutson
Now, with a little help from Democratic party donors, he’s the GOP nominee for Ohio’s Senate seat.

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This is Swamp Notes, the weekly podcast from the FT News Briefing, where we talk about all of the things happening in the 2024 US presidential election. I’m Sonja Hutson, and this week we’re asking: why are Democrats boosting Trump-backed candidates? Here with me to discuss is Peter Spiegel. He’s the FT’s US managing editor. Hi, Peter.

Peter Spiegel
Thanks for having me, Sonja.

Sonja Hutson
And we’ve also got Lauren Fedor, the FT’s deputy Washington bureau chief. Hi, Lauren.

Lauren Fedor
Hi, Sonja.

Sonja Hutson
OK, so we just had a big primary election day earlier this week. Voters headed to the polls in Arizona, Illinois, Kansas, Florida and Ohio. And I want to focus on Ohio because that is where Democrats helped elevate a Maga candidate named Bernie Moreno for Senate. And before we get into that big question that I just posed, the “why” question. I want us to first talk about the “how”. So, Lauren, how did Democrats do this?

Lauren Fedor
So Bernie Moreno was in a three-person field, definitely the Maga candidate. He had the endorsement of President Trump. And at the eleventh hour, President Trump went out to Ohio last weekend and rallied for him. He was also Chuck Schumer’s choice, though. And Chuck Schumer is the top Senate Democrat. Now a pack if you bear with me, that’s affiliated with Chuck Schumer. So a fundraising vehicle spent $2.5mn on ads that ran in Ohio in the last stretch, all promoting Moreno as the Trump-affiliated candidate, as the Maga candidate. And they kind of tried to do two things with this. One was boost his profile with the Republican base, but it also kind of laid the groundwork for the general election, when that’s going to be the message that Democrats are sending to the general electorate and to their voters, which is like you better not vote for this guy because he’s Donald Trump’s.

Sonja Hutson
Yeah. So, Peter, let’s get into the big “why” question. Why do Democrats use this strategy? I mean, what makes them think it’s effective?

Peter Spiegel
Well, I mean, look, it’s happened before and it worked, right? And they you know Trump lost in 2020. And I think more important if you look at the midterms in 2022, this was a year in which there were supposed to be Republicans take back the Senate and get a huge margin in the House. And neither of those happened because largely, there were some really bad Trumpist candidates in the field. Now, look, it’s a very, very dangerous strategy, right? Because the problem is what happens if it doesn’t work? We’ve already seen some of the ramifications. You do have candidates that were Maga candidates, that are now in Congress and you see what’s happened. I mean, we can’t get funding for Ukraine through the House because it’s dominated by a small faction of rightwing Trump people. And so it is a risk the Democrats are taking. So I’ll be honest with you, I find a little bit hypocritical. We think this is a danger to the democracy. We think this is a danger to our government, and yet we want them to win the Republican nomination. So it is, for Democrats, a high risk, high reward dangerous strategy.

Lauren Fedor
I mean, one thing I would point out, though, is that it’s not all Democrats thinking this is a good idea. In fact, I was talking to someone earlier today and he said it was definitely fair for me to describe it as controversial within Democratic circles in Washington, whether this was a good way to be spending money and whether it sent the right signal to voters. As you say, Peter, there is a risk that they kind of come off as looking a bit hypocritical here. In the bigger picture, the Democrats are looking at a much more challenging map this year than they were back in 2022. And with the Senate so finely balanced already, and the fact that Joe Manchin in West Virginia is not running for re-election, and he was this real kind of unique figure that was able to win in such a Trumpy state. I mean, they’ve pretty much written off that state already. And as it stands, the Democrats, if they want to hold on, need to hold on to Ohio. They also need to hold on in Arizona. They’ve got to win in Montana, which isn’t another state that Trump is likely to win.

Peter Spiegel
These are not Democratic states. You’re exactly right. Yeah.

Lauren Fedor
So you know, they’re taking a gamble against a backdrop that is pretty challenging, I think, for them.

Sonja Hutson
Yeah. I’m also wondering about the inverse of this. Like are Republicans trying to do the same thing, trying to tie Democratic candidates to Biden?

Lauren Fedor
I don’t think we’ve seen, like, strategically, the kind of spending money in the primaries in the same way. Certainly not the cycle. But Bernie Moreno is already trying to tie Sherrod Brown, who will be his opponent in November, the incumbent to Biden.

Voice clip of Bernie Moreno
Here’s what I wonder. I wonder whether Sherrod Brown is going to wear with honour his 99 per cent voting record with Joe Biden. Whether Joe Biden is the kind of person that he likes to associate with, because I would predict this: if Joe Biden enters Ohio, Sherrod Brown is going to fly out of here like a scared cat, right?

Lauren Fedor
I mean, he’s not wrong, right? Ohio is a state that once upon a time was a key swing state, was a bellwether. But in the kind of post-2016 Trump era has become solidly Republican. Trump won there by eight points last time around in 2020, even though he obviously did not win the presidency. Most, kind of non-partisan analysts expect a similar margin this time around. That means that Brown needs to get a lot of ticket splitters. He needs a lot of people who are going to vote for Trump to also vote for him.

Peter Spiegel
Let me just disagree with Lauren, mostly because I like to disagree with Lauren. But because of this, I think that this is a strategy that really works for Republicans in the way it works for Democrats. Because let’s be honest, Joe Biden has a record of almost 50 years in Congress and as vice-president, and president. He’s a moderate Democrat. Now he’s unpopular but you’re not really hearing the kind of things where we’re going to try to portray Joe Biden as a crazy, radical liberal. What they’re trying to do instead is maybe be a bit of a nuance, is they’re trying to tie Biden to the leftwing of the Democratic party. Right? Maybe it’s a nuance, but I don’t think they’re going to be successful in trying to portray Joe Biden as a radical in the way the Democrats are trying to portray Trump as a radical. But there is a case they’re trying to build that Joe Biden, his party, has been overtaken by a bunch of crazies, and you can’t vote for it.

Sonja Hutson
Well, so why are the kind of nuances of these strategies different between the two parties, like, why are Democrats able to, you know, do this maybe a little more effectively than Republicans are?

Peter Spiegel
Trump is a polarising figure like no one else in the history of American politics, I would say. And as a result, what we have seen is Democrats will show up en masse, even for a relatively unpopular candidate, because Biden was not hugely popular four years ago when he ran among the base. But they turned out en masse more votes than any presidential candidate in the history of the United States, because Trump is such a radicalising figure. The reverse I just don’t think is true. I just don’t think Joe Biden being a radical lefty, I just don’t think works for the Republican party because it’s not true on its face.

Sonja Hutson
Well, I think Lauren and I met some folks up in New Hampshire who definitely would disagree with this.

Lauren Fedor
It tells differently, Peter. You know, if you spend some time with the kind of Trump base, they will tell you about how Joe Biden is the most corrupt politician to ever walk the earth, and among other things.

Peter Spiegel
I guess I would say there that is certainly the view of the Republican primary voter, who tends to be a radical voter themselves. Is that 51 per cent of the electorate, though? I don’t think it is. I think it’s 30 to 40 per cent. And maybe again, I’m looking through the lens of a more traditional race, but the battle is going to be, I think, in the centre where you’re going to have to fight for the Philadelphia suburbs or the Phoenix suburbs or the Atlanta suburbs, and those voters are not going to be, I don’t think, motivated by “Joe Biden is a crazy lefty”. It doesn’t really play in those districts, I would argue, among the voters that Trump needs to win over.

Sonja Hutson
Mmm. I guess just big picture, the last thing I want to ask you guys is: what does this phenomenon, all of you know, all the things we’ve been talking about in this episode, what does that say about where American politics are at right now?

Lauren Fedor
I mean, I just think in many ways this is a reminder that Donald Trump is the singular issue in American politics, left, right or centre. And re-election campaigns are often a referendum on the incumbent. And yet we see the Democrats here trying to make it a referendum on the guy who came before. It’s somehow all going to be about whether or not voters can stomach the idea of another four years of Donald Trump, which is just remarkable to me.

Peter Spiegel
I think Lauren is 100 per cent right on this one. It is, yet again, a race that’s going to be about Donald Trump. Or at least that can be the campaign rhetoric. I guess the question I have: is it going to work? Right? It worked in 2020. It was about Donald Trump. It worked in 2022, it was about Donald Trump. In 2024, are voters going to be motivated on an issue that is many ways backward-looking? What we have seen in polling is people are worried about inflation. People are worried about immigration. They’re worried about these old-fashioned kitchen table pocketbook kind of issues. I hate to sound stereotypical and I just don’t know, despite the fact that both obviously Donald Trump himself, but also the Democratic party are going to try to make this about Donald Trump, whether the voters are going to go along with that. But we’ve seen this, you know, this picture before, and we’re likely to see it again.

Lauren Fedor
And I think, you know, just underpinning that is the reminder that no matter what poll you look at, the vast majority of Americans don’t want this match up. Right? So we’re talking about ...

Sonja Hutson
It’s the match-up they’re going to get.

Lauren Fedor
Yeah. Exactly. So we’re looking at a match up that nobody wants, between two people that we know a whole lot about. In many ways, relitigating the last four and eight years-ish of kind of American life, it just . . . no wonder people want to tune out and can’t get excited about it.

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Sonja Hutson
All right. Well, I think that’s a good place to stop. We’re going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we’re going to do Exit Poll.

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We are back with Exit Poll, where we talk about something that didn’t happen on the campaign trail and apply just some rigorous political analysis to it. Besides apple pie, there’s probably nothing more American than baseball. And this week, in shocking news, Major League Baseball held its opening day festivities outside the US — in South Korea, of all places, in a series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres. So, Peter and Lauren, I want to ask you: is this a sign of strength for American soft power under Joe Biden, or could it be a boost for globalisation sceptics like Donald Trump?

Peter Spiegel
Oh gosh, I must say, I haven’t thought about the geopolitical ramifications of the opening series in Korea. Boy, look, I will say it is 100 per cent true that Biden is, particularly in east Asia, all about alliances. He has, particularly with the South Koreans. So I’m going to say this is a triumph for Biden-ism. I mean, remember, for four years Donald Trump, he sucked up to Kim Jong Un, the North Koreans, and pooped all over our allies. And so I’m going to say this is a lefty Biden conspiracy to convince Major League Baseball to be nice to allies.

Lauren Fedor
You know, I think on one hand, I agree with Peter. On the other hand, I think Donald Trump is a pretty boastful guy. And if he won in November and we saw an expansion of MLB baseball across the world, he’d be taking credit for it and saying it was all his idea. And isn’t it great that America has the best sports and the rest of the world wants to copy us? And I have to give credit to Peter for pointing out to me that, speaking of Trump’s boasts, once upon a time he claimed that he could have been a pro-baseball player himself, but luckily he went into real estate instead.

Sonja Hutson
Wow. I wonder how the world would be different in that alternate reality.

Lauren Fedor
We can only imagine.

Sonja Hutson
I want to thank our guest this week, Peter Spiegel. He is the FT’s US managing editor. Thanks, Peter.

Peter Spiegel
Great being on.

Sonja Hutson
And Lauren Fedor, she’s our deputy Washington bureau chief. Thanks, Lauren.

Lauren Fedor
Thanks for having me.

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Sonja Hutson
This was Swamp Notes, the US politics show from the FT News Briefing. If you want to sign up for our Swamp Notes newsletter, we’ve got a link to that in the show notes. Our show is mixed and produced by Ethan Plotkin. It’s also produced by Lauren Fedor. And I want to give special thanks to Pierre Nicholson. I’m your host, Sonja Hutson. Our executive producer is Topher Forhecz, and Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. Check back next week for more US political analysis from the Financial Times.