MAGGIE: This is Maggie (ph) from San Luis Obispo, Calif. I just pitched some yeast on some cider so that we could make some adult beverages. This podcast was recorded at...
ASMA KHALID, HOST:
1:39 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, September 11 of 2024.
MAGGIE: Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll still be dreaming about the delicious flavors from that cider when it's finished fermenting. OK, here's the show.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIGTOP ORCHESTRA'S "TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)")
FRANCO ORDOÑEZ, BYLINE: That sounds so much healthier than what we're about to talk about.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Is that healthy? I mean, I think it's more about hard cider, right? I could use a hard cider, I think, but I think I'd fall back asleep.
KHALID: Hey there. It's the NPR POLITICS PODCAST. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.
ORDOÑEZ: I'm Franco Ordoñez. I cover the presidential campaign.
MONTANARO: And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.
KHALID: And today on the show, the day after the big debate, what comes next now for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump? And to help us make sense of that, I'm so glad that we have our experts here. So Franco, last night, I think it is an objectively accurate description to say that Trump did not have one of his best debate performances. His answers were at times meandering, rambling. He trafficked in conspiracy theories. The moderators had to fact-check and correct some of his false arguments. That said, what is the mood like in the Trump campaign, the Trump orbit, today?
ORDOÑEZ: I mean, I do think that is the objective look at how the debate went, but that's not the message that the Trump campaign is saying - not surprising, of course. I mean, I would say it's kind of a mixed bag. On the one hand, Trump is claiming that this may have been his best debate ever.
KHALID: Oh, wow. OK.
ORDOÑEZ: He said that a few times. He said that last night. He said that this morning. At the same time, he's also arguing that it was rigged and that it was three against one, and that he was fact-checked by the moderators and that Harris didn't get any pushback. You know, I will say that the campaign is a bit heartened by some of the instant flash polls that show Trump support continues to kind of remain strong on some of the key issues like the economy. And I know Domenico is here, and I'm sure he kind of has some, you know, opinions on the merits of those kind of polls. I mean, it's obviously extremely early, but I think it does kind of speak to what we've long known, that Trump's support is kind of resilient and on his base.
But, I mean, much, much different than Harris, of course. She had a much different night. Now, I would argue that the bar was lower for Harris, certainly after Biden's disastrous debate, but Asma, what's your take on the vibe and what's her strategy going forward?
KHALID: The Harris campaign, Democrats broadly feel really upbeat and optimistic after Harris' performance last night. You know, I do think that there were question marks about how Harris would perform as a candidate. She has had a very quick rise, as the being at the top of the ticket, and she had never participated in a general election presidential debate. And I think I would argue Donald Trump at times is a tough debating partner to spar with 'cause you don't always know what you're going to get. I would argue she effectively yesterday, and deftly, was able to navigate Trump, and in fact, pushed his buttons a number of times...
ORDOÑEZ: Many, many times.
KHALID: ...And encouraged him to take the bait - right? - which is something, I think, different. It was a different debate tactic than we've seen from Democrats in the past, whether that was Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton. You know, look, they feel upbeat enough that you have heard the campaign suggest that they are open to more debates.
ORDOÑEZ: Yeah, I mean, Trump, on the other hand, he's not committed to that. He's making an argument that Harris wants another debate because she lost, and they're making the case and that he's still thinking about it. But he is certainly not committing to another debate. And I'm not sure he'd want another debate if it went like that one. That said, he may want another debate to have another crack at this.
MONTANARO: I think what you're getting from the Trump campaign there is a little Norman Vincent Peale, a little power of positive thinking. And in Trump's case, that very well could be true because he has a very solid base of support. But, you know, let's get real. The flash polls from other places showed clearly that people felt that Harris won the debate, even people who were on the Republican side. But I do think that when the Trump folks say that the polls show that he still leads on other issues that people care about, that is true. Our poll came out the day of the debate and showed that he has an advantage on the economy, on immigration, on the war in the Middle East. Harris has a much bigger lead on abortion rights.
So those things aren't going to change probably very much, but the fact is, he didn't do any of the things that people who prep candidates for debates would tell him to do and say that he should. He didn't stick to issues that he's strongest on, like immigration. Instead, took the bait every time. When he's talking about immigrants in the U.S. illegally eating dogs and cats, you know, it's not true. It's inflammatory. Harris made him look, quote, "extreme," as she mentioned, and that's an own goal. And debates really do matter, not just because you're telling people, you know, what you're going to do but whether you're prepared for the job, what kind of president you're going to be in dealing with foreign leaders and trying to sway people to your side.
KHALID: All right, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, I want to talk more about that NPR/PBS News/Marist poll that we were mentioning.
And we're back. And let's talk a little bit more about polls. Domenico, you mentioned a moment ago flash polls. Can you define what that is? How's that different from one of our standard NPR/PBS News/Marist polls?
MONTANARO: You know, I don't put a lot of stock, frankly, even in these, quote-unquote, "flash polls," because they're very short. You essentially are polling people very quickly, right after the debate. You can do them online quickly, compared to having to call a bunch of people, and you might get, you know, a few hundred people. And you have good enough results where that if the margin is big enough, that it tells you something. And it certainly was, at least in CNN's instant poll that they did, with Harris 2 to 1, you know, people saying that she did better in the debate. And - but we do have to underscore, just because even some Republicans think she did better in the debate doesn't necessarily mean that she's going to win this election.
KHALID: Yeah, I was going to say, what does it mean to win a debate? - because I think back to 2016. You can make the argument Hillary Clinton won some of those debates.
MONTANARO: Absolutely.
KHALID: She ultimately did not win the election. So what does it even mean to win the debate?
ORDOÑEZ: You know, the fact is, like, it doesn't matter a lot. You might get a point or two bump out of the debate, but for someone like Harris, if she was able to have a passable debate and do a good enough job, then the spotlight and focus and scrutiny should then turn to Trump. And I think that's what we're seeing today.
KHALID: We had mentioned briefly this new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. To be clear, Domenico, this was conducted before the debate took place last night. What do we need to know? What were sort of the major top lines that you think are still relevant?
MONTANARO: Yeah, this was not a flash poll.
(LAUGHTER)
KHALID: Helpful to know.
MONTANARO: You know, the big things going into the debate were that 70% of people said that they were going to watch. About a quarter of people, in addition to that, said that they were going to follow the news closely in the days after if they didn't watch the debate. So we are expecting a lot of eyeballs to have been on that debate last night - maybe the biggest presidential debate audience, certainly of this election cycle, potentially. You know, I think that it may have been one of the biggest audiences that we've seen, and certainly people are going to be taking it in, in the coming days. So I think that that was a very important finding from this, to underscore the stakes for both of these candidates.
The survey also found that Trump is more trusted on the economy, immigration, how to handle the Middle East. Harris has a wider margin on abortion rights, and I think that that's fairly significant as well because that was something in the debate last night that she was able to really find her stride on and pin Donald Trump down on. He really dug the hole much deeper for himself at that debate on abortion rights. And on something like immigration, you know, which really, ostensibly should be his best issue, he wasn't really able to really put Harris on the defensive.
ORDOÑEZ: I think it speaks to what you were kind of talking about earlier, about how Harris was able to goad Trump into kind of his worst instincts. I mean, he always follows his gut. I think they have studied his playbook so much that they knew if they just started talking about things like crowd size, that he would get distracted from his immigration argument, and she did that over and over and over again.
KHALID: Domenico, I want to ask you about one quick nugget from this poll that stood out to me, and that was the wild changes that we saw in Harris' support among independents and Latinos from the previous poll that NPR did. How do you make sense of that?
MONTANARO: From August until now, we've seen actually a pretty big shift, by double digits when it comes to independents and Latinos, in Trump's favor. Independents, Trump now leads by three points, which is close enough for the Harris campaign to not be too upset about. But Latinos, Trump is leading 51 to 47 in our poll, which is one of those really eye-popping numbers because Democrats usually do very, very well with them. And I think that what it tells you is that Latinos and independents are potentially two groups that right now are showing a lot of volatility and could be potential swing groups.
I think that we have to sort of take a step back a little bit and see if there's more that affirms this because the margins of errors in these national polls are pretty high when it comes to these subgroups. We're talking a range of about 16 points because of just the sample size and all that. So I would just sort of pump the brakes on any, you know, big analysis on that, take a step back and see if - what the evidence is in the next few weeks.
KHALID: As we are now inching closer to the point where people are going to start voting - right? - early voting starts in some states this month, what are you going to be watching for?
ORDOÑEZ: It's kind of two things, and I cover Trump a lot, so I'll focus there. One is, can he take back the narrative? I mean, remember before and immediately after the Democratic National Convention, we talked about how Harris was getting all the attention, that she was so new. We were talking about her new campaign. We were talking about who she was going to pick for vice president. The Trump campaign was complaining about all the coverage of her. And I think there was some truth to that, but again, I mean, this was such a new campaign. And we often would say, let's wait to see how things shake out in September, especially at the debate when the scrutiny would increase. Well, the scrutiny has increased, and now it looks like she's getting another bump. And Trump has yet to take back the narrative.
Still, another thing that I'm watching for, and it is related, is how much longer will he play defense? How much longer will he re-litigate this debate as he was this morning? I mean, just for example, are we going to continue to have another week or more talking about crowd sizes? Can he resist? He's going to Arizona tomorrow. He's going to Las Vegas on Friday. Is he going to make some kind of comment about crowd sizes? Is he going to joke about people leaving early, you know, instead of doing what his Republican allies and his team want him to do - talk about the economy?
Harris is going to Wilkes-Barre and Jonestown, Pa., where he spoke just a few weeks ago. There's definitely going to be some comparisons about this - crowd sizes - regardless of who has more people. It is good for Harris and not good for Trump if they're talking about crowd sizes and not the issues that Trump and his allies desperately want him talking about.
MONTANARO: You know, the thing that really strikes me at this point in the campaign is that Harris has done everything right in this very shortened campaign. You know, she's raised half a billion dollars. She's outorganizing the Trump campaign. She's out-debated Trump, frankly, after last night, but she could still very easily lose the election. And that's because this is a very close race. The seven swing states are more conservative than the rest of the country. And I think that that's an important thing to keep in mind because the work is not going to be done on computer screens, watching what the polling averages are. The work is going to be done, you know, mobilizing voters, being out in the field.
KHALID: That's very true. All right, well, we will leave it there for today. We'll be back in your feeds tomorrow. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.
ORDOÑEZ: I'm Franco Ordoñez. I cover the campaign.
MONTANARO: And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.
KHALID: And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR POLITICS PODCAST.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIGTOP ORCHESTRA'S "TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)")
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