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Jeffrey Goldberg: President Biden is facing a large set of challenges as he runs for re-election. The most unique challenge of all, no one his age has ever won the presidency and voters are worried.
It’s worth pointing out that former President Donald Trump, Biden’s likely opponent, is 77 and has been afflicted by more than the usual number of gaffes lately.
Donald Trump, Former U.S. President: Very big hello to a place where we’ve done very well, Sioux Falls.
So, Sioux City. Let me ask you, how many people come — how many people come from Sioux City?
Jeffrey Goldberg: Sorry for the cliche, but the next election, now exactly a year away, could be the most important of any of our lifetimes, next.
Good evening and Welcome to WASHINGTON WEEK.
So much to discuss this week, including, of course, the Middle East war, domestic politics around the Middle East war, along with the reign of the next Republican to test out the speaker’s seat.
Joining me tonight in conversation are Dan Balz, the chief correspondent for The Washington Post, Adam Harris, my colleague and staff writer at The Atlantic, Susan Page is the Washington bureau chief for USA Today, and Adam Thompson is a national political correspondent for Axios.
So, let’s talk about — let’s talk about something that you wrote, Alex. I pick you to start. You’ve been covering the White House and Biden and the Democrats, and this week you’ve done some interesting reporting about how a large group of healthy-sized ego Democrats with national profiles, or people who think they have national profiles, are kind of sort of passively aggressively jockeying for 2028, but also maybe a little bit jockeying for 2024. Tell us about your reporting. It was a really fascinating story in Axios.
Adam Thompson, National Political Correspondent, Axios: Well, thanks, and I appreciate you calling me first. So the —
Jeffrey Goldberg: First time on the show. That’s part of the initiation process, yes.
Adam Thompson: So, I sort of call this — it’s basically the just-in-case 2024 primary, which is all of these Democrats who do likely have White House ambitions, or at least want to set themselves up for it, they are making moves, maybe in this case a little bit earlier than usual. They are starting national PACs. They are making sure to somehow happen to visit South Carolina at all times of year. They are making sure to call donors, go around states and meet with state party leaders.
And the reason for this is because there is still some doubt that the 80-year-old Joe Biden is not going to end up being on the ballot next fall. And the reason you would do this is — so you had Cory Booker. He’s going to go to South Carolina this next month. J.B. Pritzker in Illinois, he just started a national abortion rights group. He has already cut a check for $2 million. And I have heard that he is probably going to cut a few more of those big checks. Gavin Newsom obviously just went to China, also has started his own national PAC. And essentially these group of Democrats are — it’s a little bit of a hedge, essentially, about the concerns with Biden’s age, and it’s a win-win because they are still supporting the president.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Well, let me ask you. You say it’s a win-win, but I have to imagine that at the White House, they’re a little bit like, hey, guys, just ease up a little bit.
Adam Thompson: I can tell you, having had some off-the-record conversations with the Biden campaign, I don’t think they were thrilled. And this is what these Democrats have been trying to do, which is to gingerly increase their national profile, but not too much. And I do think it’s getting to a head here, where some of them are going a little bit too far.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Susan, I’m going to ask each of you this question, but what are the chances that Joe Biden doesn’t actually run?
Susan Page, Washington Bureau Chief, USA Today: It’s — the chances are not zero. You know, politics is not a straight line. We’ve got some time to go — not a lot of time to go before Joe Biden could choose not to run.
I don’t think Joe Biden gets pushed out, but I think it is conceivable that there’s some combination of factors involving his health, concern about his family, a feeling that Hunter Biden is being mistreated because he is his father is president, that could contribute to a decision on his part to pull out.
I don’t think it’s likely. It’s not impossible. I also think it’s not impossible that Trump, through some combination of factors, turns out not to be the nominee. I think we should be modest about what we know is going to happen in politics before it actually happens.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. And, Dan, I note that LBJ — we do have some time here. LBJ dropped out or stepped aside in March 31st of 1968. So, there is time. That, of course, forced the decision into the convention. And so my question to you, apart from giving us the entire history of the Democratic Party, if you could, in the next two minutes, my question to you is, at what point would a Biden decision not to run again really mess with the opportunities the Democrats may or may not have this campaign?
Dan Balz, Chief Correspondent, The Washington Post: It’s a really hard question to answer, honestly. I think early spring would be the latest. But even then, at this point, I think, I agree with Susan, we should be humble about anticipating or predicting the future. But I think it’s unlikely that the president will not run unless there’s probably a health episode. I think that would be the most contributing factor.
I think other things suggest that he’s determined to run because he thinks he’s done a good job and he thinks he’s best positioned to beat Donald Trump. And he’s got some more things he wants to do, and he’s president, and he likes the job. But there is this nervousness around the party, among politicians and among a lot of voters, this question of, is he going to run? Should he run? Maybe it would be better if he didn’t run.
I think all of that is pretty well-screened out by the president but people worry about what would happen if he didn’t — you know, if suddenly he had to drop out.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. And, I mean, one of the issues here, obviously if you were polling at 50, 55 percent popularity, approval ratings, we may not even be talking about this, even though he’s turning 81. But he’s not at — in the 50s, he’s not in the 60s, he’s not doing that well, and it’s hard to move that number.
Talk about what is dragging his reputation down. Because, you know — and I think you know this from covering the White House, you all know this from covering the White House, they argue, the president’s people argue, that actually the record is pretty good. And there’s some proof behind that.
So, I mean, talk about what’s behind the persistence of the problem.
Adam Harris, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: You’re right. If you look across the record, the Biden administration’s record on the economy, things that people say that they care about, has been pretty good. But if you look across the poll numbers, you do see consistent declines from his numbers in 2020, from his numbers in 2022.
I mean, if you look at black voters, for example, the numbers are down, you see a sort of small gap beginning to appear from people who say that, you know, I previously voted for President Biden, now I would support a President Trump, a hypothetical President Trump candidacy.
It’s a small figure, but it is a figure nonetheless. And those margins —
Jeffrey Goldberg: But this is a small gain in a sense that you need a few thousand votes in a series of states in order to tip the entire thing the other way.
Adam Harris: Exactly, and you’ve seen the Biden campaign putting out radio ads on black radio in Wisconsin, in Georgia, right, and in places where they know that they need to shore up that support in order to be successful.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Wait, stay on this subject for a second. It’s not black female or Latino female, it’s male, right? I mean, is the softening happening across gender more than race?
Adam Harris: Well, it’s a mix, right, because some of it is also across the sort of college education gap. You’ve seen larger gaps develop in between black voters with college degrees, black voters without college degrees, just generally non-white voters with and without college degrees.
But in terms of black males, even in the 2020 election, in the 2016 election, you saw these efforts from Democrats up into Election Day to really shore up their support among black men, because that is a demographic that has, you know, heard promises before, right?
You have this sort of — this feedback loop, the cycle that happens where they go out and they’re told to vote and they go out and they vote for the candidate, and then they don’t feel the economic impact. They don’t feel the impacts on their community. And so it becomes a cycle of needing to continue to shore up that support or show them that you’re actually working for it.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. How serious a problem is this?
Adam Thompson: I mean, there is deep anxiety all the way to the Oval Office. The fact matter is that Joe Biden is exactly where Donald Trump was at this point, I guess, four years ago. And that is very frustrating to the president.
And the other thing that the re-election campaign has been doing is they’ve been spending almost a million dollars a week on television ads. And that is very early to be spending this amount of money. And almost all of those ads are on positive Biden ads, Bidenomics ads, Biden going to Kyiv and meeting with Zelenskyy ads, trying to show the president in a sort of heroic manner, the numbers haven’t moved.
And that’s why you — I actually think Dan’s colleague just this last week reported that Joe Biden wants to double down, spend more money on television to try to move those numbers.
Jeffrey Goldberg: On positive?
Adam Thompson: Yes, on positive. Not — I mean, there’s been a few anti-Republican about abortion rights ads, but the overwhelmingly amount of money has been spent on pro-Biden ads to try to move those numbers.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Let’s stay on this subject because it’s so fascinating, this mystery of the unbudging numbers. And, obviously, we all know that many Democrats, Democratic professionals, have a villain, and the villain is us. The villain is the media that they say won’t highlight for the American people the great economic gains, the way he has masterfully handled the Middle East and Ukraine, et cetera, et cetera.
How much of this is a media issue? How much of this is issues beyond media’s control? How much of this just is age? People look at this guy and say, wow, he’s pretty old.
Susan Page: You know, by the way, we’re the bipartisan villain. It’s not just Democrats who blame us for their problems.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.
Susan Page: You know, the first —
Jeffrey Goldberg: I have not noticed anyone blame the media for anything about seven years. So, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Susan Page: Ronald Reagan, the first president I covered with any seriousness, was once asked, how can an actor be president? He said, how can someone who is not an actor be president, because there is part of the job that is selling yourself and connecting with voters.
And I think that President Biden is paying a price for not doing more news conferences, more traditional interviews with mainstream journalists, being out there more, making his own case. The reason they’re doing paid ads is because he is, for a variety of reasons, reluctant or unable to go out and make his own case. And that also feeds his concern about age.
So, I think that he could address both the concern about age and do a better job of selling what he’s done if he were out there more.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Dan, is it reluctance or inability to jump off from what Susan is talking about?
Dan Balz: I think it’s a combination of both. I think there’s a little bit of reluctance. And — but he’s actually out a lot in very structured settings. And in those settings, he doesn’t necessarily come across in a commanding way.
And I think one of the things that we’ve noticed, particularly people who’ve watched Joe Biden over many, many years, he’s a more subdued politician today than he used to be. I mean, he was a very animated politician as a younger man. Today, he is more restrained. He’s more reserved.
He does get credit for the way he’s tried to handle the Middle East. He does get credit for the way he has handled Ukraine, but not from the public. He gets credit from people who know what those jobs entail. But that doesn’t translate into political support.
But I’d make one other related point. His numbers have not moved, and the ads haven’t done anything for it. But if you think about this entire year, very little has moved across the board politically. I mean, this has just been a kind of a standing in place year.
Jeffrey Goldberg: And a completely paralyzed Republican primary process.
Dan Balz: Exactly. And public perceptions of both the president and the former president just have not changed much.
Will they once we get into the campaign season and voters are beginning to cast their votes in the primaries and there’s more activity? I don’t know.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes. Well, let’s talk about the 77-year-old person who will be running against Joe Biden, presumably, unless something happens in the paralyzed Republican race. I mean, he’s obviously sui generis anyway, and so he’s not been judged by traditional standards of what makes a politician. But he’s been making mistakes. He doesn’t look like he’s gassed up in the same way on occasion.
Obviously, some of his statements have been even more outrageous. I mean, it’s hard to judge if you go from 11 to 12. I don’t know. But he’s becoming more bitter, angrier, a little disconnected in a kind of way. I mean, should the Republicans have that anxiety about his health and ability to perform?
Susan Page: Well, he’s a pretty big (INAUDIBLE) pretty vigorous.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Well, he projects his voice out.
Susan Page: And I’m sure this is very frustrating to the White House. When President Biden makes a gaffe, people will think, oh, age. When former President Trump makes a gaffe, they think, oh, there’s Trump. When he makes mistakes, Sioux City, Sioux Falls.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.
Adam Thompson: Well — and this gets to what you were saying about the public performance aspect of this job, that you may — policy wonks (ph) in D.C. be like, well, it doesn’t matter. But the fact of the matter is that once you enter the T.V. era, all the presidents started getting more handsome.
And now we’re in this era of sort of reality television. And the public performance aspect of this job really matters. And Trump is a former reality television star. He makes sure that he is well lit. He is like exacting about some of these standards and the way the White House is not.
And that being said, all the concerns about Joe Biden’s age do sort of sometimes obscure the fact that a majority of voters are also concerned about Trump’s age. And we know nothing about his health. He has not really seen even a flattering doctor’s note. We don’t know anything.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Not lately, yes. Another group that’s gotten much more handsome in the television age, print journalists. I think we could all agree on that.
But stay on this for a minute because — and by the way, again, we’re having this conversation within the traditional political framework, Trump’s age, gaffes, et cetera. He’s also under multiple federal indictments. He also led an insurrection against the Constitution, noting for the record. And that sort of thing doesn’t move the needle one way or the other, this kind of this paralysis in perception.
Is there anything that’s going to happen in the coming months, do you think, in his cases that might actually move the needle one way or the other?
Dan Balz: Yes, but I don’t know what it is. No, I’m being facetious.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes.
Dan Balz: There’s very little in those cases that’s likely to have an impact politically on him, unless — again, unless there’s some enormous surprise.
Jeffrey Goldberg: But, again, it’s like Susan says, everything is baked in, to your knowledge, of Donald Trump already.
Dan Balz: People know what they — the vast majority of people know what they think about Donald Trump and about President Biden. And so there’s a small group of people who will — you know, who may be swinging back and forth and will make an ultimate decision.
But it is not as though he is a commandingly strong standard bearer for the Republican Party for all the reasons you’re citing. I mean, he has genuine weaknesses and they may be different than Biden’s, and the question is which of those are going to be dispositive when people go into the ballot box.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Let me pivot and talk about Mike Johnson, the new speaker, who’s completed a little bit more than — it’s been a big week for him. It’s his first week as speaker and it’s his first week that anybody in the country knows who Mike Johnson is also.
Give us your thumbnail view, Susan, of how he’s doing so far with a special emphasis on this Israel-Ukraine aid package issue.
Susan Page: Well, first of all, let’s say that — let’s stipulate that anyone who becomes speaker of their House during their fourth term in Congress before they’ve even chaired a committee has got to be someone who is smart and skilled, because he didn’t — you know, he wasn’t —
Jeffrey Goldberg: Or they ran out of other people to make speaker.
Susan Page: Well, there were some other people who were members of Congress who could have become speaker. He’s the one who became speaker. I think he’s come across as very — he’s a very nice face on very conservative policies. I think in that way he’s different from Jim Jordan, who was like a tougher personality on some of the same policies.
But I think this early effort, this early planned decision to move through this Israeli aid package in a very partisan way by adding something, a poison pill, that guarantees that the White House would veto it if it came to the president’s desk, that makes it — the Senate says they won’t — the Senate majority leader says he won’t take it up. The Senate Republican leader says he doesn’t support this approach of dividing Ukraine aid from Israel aid.
It tells you that he plans to cultivate and maintain the support of that group of Republican House members who have been so difficult for a series of speakers.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Is he doing that only because that’s the only way you survive in the job now?
Adam Harris: I mean, he has seen a speaker just ousted. So, I mean, it’s very well — having served under an ousted House speaker, it’s got to be sort of a — the monkey on his back, right? He’s looking at this saying, I have to keep this constituency happy. There’s also maybe the constituency that I most agree with.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Oh, that’s a good point.
Adam Harris: And so, you know, if you just sort of think about it —
Jeffrey Goldberg: It’s not that hard for him to be nice to Matt Gaetz because he agrees with Matt Gaetz.
Adam Harris: Exactly. And so going forward, you’ll likely see him continue to — it may look like he’s appeasing this more conservative wing of the party, but he is a pretty central (INAUDIBLE).
Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Adam, I want to ask you a question about the Matt Gaetz of the Senate, Tommy Tuberville. I go to you first. This is a very important subject, these holds that are on military promotions or pending on promotions. I go to you because you’re from Alabama. Not that it’s your fault or anything but you’re from Alabama. You actually went to Texas Tech where Tommy Tuberville coached. And you’re actually an Army brat, also your father is a career military, army officer. So, you have — the floor is yours. You have some insight about why he’s doing this and what it means.
Adam Harris: So, I will say he’s doing it in large part because he can. If you think about the sort of structure of elections in Alabama, right? It is effectively, as you get to the statewide level, a single party state. The statehouse in Alabama is broken into effectively all white Republicans and all black, except for two Democrats, right? So, it is a very evenly divided state.
But Tuberville, he comes at this with a sort of — it’s almost an arrogance. Senator Tuberville has a sort of arrogance about this to say that this is — I don’t want the federal government to be paying for people to get abortions and sending people out of state. And so he is effectively saying, I’m going to hold up these promotions.
But you even have Senator Lindsey Graham. You have these veterans in this Senate who are effectively — yes.
Jeffrey Goldberg: I want you all to listen to something that Senator Tuberville said in reference to the new Marine Corps commandant who recently had a cardiac event. Listen to this for one second. I want to talk about it.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL): Somebody said he’s working 18 hours a day. Jack Reed blamed me for his heart attack. Come on, give me a break. This guy is going to work 18, 20 hours a day no matter what. That’s what we do. You know, I did that for years because you got to get the job done.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Susan, is being a football coach the same thing as running the Marine Corps?
Susan Page: It is not. I haven’t done either thing.
Jeffrey Goldberg: That was probably a softball question.
Susan Page: Yes. I have not done either job, but I can tell you, I’m pretty sure they’re different. And that’s — I mean, I find that — for a guy who’s been elected to office, I find that remarkable, even if he thinks that, like it’s not my fault the guy had a heart attack. I mean, what you say is, I’m really sorry he had a heart attack and we should do all we can to, you know, pray for his recovery.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Go ahead.
Adam Harris: Well, especially when he said, right, this is unsustainable. He said, I’m working from 5.30 to 11.00 P.M. This is unsustainable. He said that in a news conference just a couple of weeks ago. And then he has a heart attack.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. This is a tough Marine. And, obviously, we can’t blame a single-point issue. We don’t know the backstory of his health.
But, I mean, talk about this, because this is the throughline on the Hill. There are, obviously, a very large number of Republicans who want to govern and who want to make policy and pass laws. But all we wind up talking about is people like Matt Gaetz and Tommy Tuberville, because they seem to be in charge. And that doesn’t seem to have changed.
Adam Thompson: Well, I think this goes exactly what you were saying, which is that they are responding to what the voters want. And the fact is, like Tommy Tuberville is not going to be able to be beaten in Alabama because of what he is doing right now. So, they are following the voters.
And like that’s I think what you saw with Mike Johnson being solid (ph), which essentially was a coup from the right wing of the party. They took someone who was Kevin McCarthy, who was really trying to show that he was conservative enough. And they were like, it’s not enough. And they replaced him with someone who is the genuine article.
And I think what you saw with what he’s doing with Israel and Ukraine is that he sees it — I mean, he see it from his constituents. He sees the polls. The fact of the matter is that there is a majority of the Republican Party, especially on the primary, that does not want to fund Ukraine anymore. And him doing this with that bill is following where the voters are and not willing to really stand up to them.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.
Susan Page: I guess I think I disagree that this is what voters want. I think that the Republicans are running a big risk by looking like they care not at all about governing. And you look at — like would you take a bet that Republicans hold the House in the next election because I wouldn’t take that bet?
Jeffrey Goldberg: Let me stand for the last word — in the short time we have left, let me ask Dan for the last word on that. Are we just in a period of performance artistry and there’s nothing on the Hill that can reverse that kind of trend, or is it kind of —
Dan Balz: For the near term, I think we are. I mean, I think this type of politics — I was talking to somebody who has worked in administrations, knows the Hill, who said there was a way in which politics and legislation used to be done. But today, it’s not done quietly or in backrooms, it’s done on social media, it’s done on cable T.V., and that creates the pressure that moves the needle.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Unfortunately, it was a great conversation but we have to leave it there for now. I want to thank my panelists for joining us for sharing their reporting.
Be sure to visit the atlantic.com for my colleague David Frum’s piece. Here’s What Biden Can Do to Change His Grim Polling. And don’t forget to tune into PBS News Weekend for the latest calls on a ceasefire in Israel’s war with Hamas.
I’m Jeffrey Goldberg. Good night from Washington.
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