Welcome to Surfing Political Waves, a short series podcast hosted by the Pepperdine School
of Public Policy.
This is Dan Schnurr.
And I'm Joel Fox.
And we're bringing you California election insight and analysis as the country ramps
up to one of the most historic presidential races in memory, as well as other fascinating
campaigns up and down the ballot.
Well Dan, it's been an interesting election and this is going to be our final podcast.
We've had some great guests talking about what might happen.
Now you and I are going to talk about what did happen as we surf political waves here
at Pepperdine University.
And I think that it was as every four years we're told it's the most important election
in the history of the country.
And I suppose every four years it is, at least for that moment.
Let me ask you a question about did someone win this election for the presidency or did
someone lose this election?
As you might suspect, Joel, it's some of both.
But to take a step back, first of all, I'm very glad that you and I get to do this last
episode together because I found that making predictions after an election is a lot more
fun than making predictions before one.
I hear you're 100 percent actually when you do that.
And what we should admit to our listeners is in our last class at the public policy
school before the election, we warned the students that it was clearly going to be a
very close election and that it could be days, if not weeks, for all the votes to be counted
and how important it was not to overreact to the amount of time it took.
Well, of course, we knew by the following morning who won that election.
So once again, we showed us that we showed everyone that we're not nearly as smart as
we thought we were.
Well, at least there are a few other elections that haven't been resolved yet as we record
this.
Fair enough.
But to answer your question, there's no question that while Kamala Harris lost this election
and she and her campaign made several mistakes along the way, perhaps the greatest mistake
may have been Joe Biden's decision or the timing of Biden's decision to step away from
the race at such a late date.
But give Trump and his team credit as well.
If Harris lost his campaign, Donald Trump won it.
And we'll be looking back for many years at some of the strategic gambles that the Trump
campaign took that paid off.
And they deserve credit for that.
I think that's right.
And a lot of people were looking at the media and the constant attacks on Donald Trump and
felt that he would not stand a chance.
What do you think he did to get around the negative reporting about his campaign that
made him successful?
Well, what we should do, even though we don't have an immense amount of time today to go
into the real depth about it, I'd suggest to you that there are two factors, one in
the primary and one in the general election.
And Joel, it's worth acknowledging that if we'd been doing this podcast two years ago
today, just after the 2022 midterm elections, we would have been talking about the inevitable
presidential campaign between Joe Biden and Ron DeSantis.
And it's easy to forget now that after the midterms, DeSantis was not just ahead of Trump
in many Republican primary polls, but appeared to be a potentially prohibitive favorite.
And so I feel like the first thing that broke in Trump's favor, which may have seemed somewhat
counterintuitive at the time, is that the various legal charges levied against him,
the four lawsuits, the 90 plus felony charges and all the rest of it may have served to
galvanize Trump's base of support and to unify the Republican Party against him.
In other words, I don't know if Trump could have been the nominee if he hadn't been the
subject of those lawsuits.
I think the lawsuits went a long way in enforcing or supporting his base.
But we've been reading a lot lately, Dan, that Trump went beyond his base.
He went and got Latino voters and black voters, mostly young men that were anticipated that
if they voted at all, which was a question, that they would vote for Kamala Harris.
So I think that's credit to his campaign for being successful on that front.
How much of a surprise do you think that was?
Well, as I mentioned a moment ago, the Trump campaign took a number of very significant
gambles in this race.
And I don't think any gamble was riskier than devoting so much time and effort to turning
out young working class male voters of all races and ethnicities, young white men, young
black men, young Latino men who did not go to college, who generally vote in very, very
small numbers.
The Trump campaign decided that they worked hard enough to communicate with those voters.
They could turn them out in large numbers and the gamble paid off.
What do you think the top issues were that affected this election?
We know what the pollsters told us, but looking at it now that the elections passed, would
you say that the economy was the top issue?
But what else might be really important in turning out the voters for Donald Trump?
Well, I do agree with the pollsters on this one.
The economy we knew all along was going to be the most impactful issue in the campaign.
I don't think we understood to the degree that it would impact the electorate.
And once again, going back to those young men, those young men without a college education,
who in many ways turned the race in Trump's direction, their lack of economic opportunities
and their frustration at not having those opportunities, I believe motivated their participation
in the race.
I'll offer you another statistic, Joel, or I'll offer you a statistic, Joel, that underscores
the importance of the economy in this campaign.
In one of the exit polls I saw, they asked voters broken down not by gender or by race
or by income, but by their position on the issue of abortion.
They asked them who they voted for.
And roughly 60%, slightly more of the voters in America say that they support abortion
either all the time or much of the time.
Those voters, 60 plus percent of the electorate, they split right down the middle, 49% for
Harris, 49% for Trump.
And what that means is roughly one quarter of the pro-choice voters in this country voted
for Donald Trump despite their disagreement with him on that issue.
That issue was going to be the...
Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead, Joel.
I was going to say, so it wasn't a major issue in turning this election.
It was an important issue, but it wasn't the major issue to turn this election that Harris
thought it was going to be.
That's exactly right.
Just as the Trump campaign pinned their campaign on inflation and on the border, Harris pinned
her campaign on abortion rights.
And she did turn out an awful lot of voters who supported legal abortions in this country.
But a lot of those voters who she turned out, even though they agreed with her on that issue,
voted for Trump on other policy matters.
So let me ask you maybe a little bit of an oddball one, but as you know, the Trump campaign
spent millions of dollars toward the end of the election on the transgender issue.
And some theories are that it helped affirm the vote of those young minority voters.
But I'm also wondering, and I'd like to hear what you say about this, Dan, I'm wondering
if those ads affected suburban women, because many people were shocked that suburban women
actually voted for Donald Trump.
And I wondered if they also were nudged by those ads about concerns for their children.
Any thought on that?
Yeah, I think first of all, I think it's important not necessarily to separate out young nonwhite
men from the broader young men population.
The set a moment ago, young men who didn't attend college, regardless of their racial
or ethnic background, reacted in very, very similar ways to Trump's campaign.
And while it's more historically notable how well Trump did with young black and Latino
men, this is a much broader effort on his part.
But your broader point is the right one, Joel.
The transgender issue, both campaigns say, moved in immense amount of votes.
And while it did motivate many of these young men to vote, I do think just an instinct that
your supposition is right, that not only did it motivate these young men, but it moved
some more traditional swing voters as well.
I don't think the Harris campaign understood how much the issue is hurting them.
It's been reported that Bill Clinton was trying to warn them that they needed to respond on
it.
They didn't see the need to respond and they paid the price.
Yeah, I heard that.
I heard that Bill Clinton was making that effort.
Do you think that the polling was fairly close to results or not?
There was the famous Iowa poll a few days before the election that turned out to not
be correct.
What about polling in general?
Everybody watches the polling for the horse race aspect of presidential election.
How is your feeling about how the pollsters did this time around?
I think we give the pollsters a bad rap.
What almost every reputable poll says when they released their results over the course
of a campaign is they make it very clear that there is a margin of error built in.
The polling is not precise and they always say there's going to be a four or 5% margin
from their poll.
To be fair, if you look at the seven swing states, six of the seven, Trump won all seven
of course, but six of the seven fell within the margin of error.
The nature of media coverage and the nature of just human behavior is we want more precision
than they can give us.
But if you look back at that margin of error in six of the seven states with the exception
of Arizona where Trump appears one by six, six and a half points, the polls were accurate.
We just didn't want to believe them because we saw those numbers so close.
You said at the beginning of our conversation that you make predictions following the election
so you can be 100% correct.
Wise strategy, my friend, wise strategy.
But let's take some conjecture where we can't prove it one way or another.
And let me start with this one.
If Joe Biden had left the scene earlier and Kamala Harris had more time to run her campaign,
you think it would have made a difference?
I'm going to hedge my answer on that, Joel.
I think it could have made a difference.
Most presidential campaigns run for a year, year and a half, two years or more.
That's a lot of time for a candidate to get to know the voters and for the voters to get
to know the candidate, particularly through a competitive primary process.
Harris, and I'm not making excuses for her, she had 107 days.
That's not a lot of time to get known.
So did that make it impossible?
Of course not.
But it made her challenge more difficult.
And I feel like the type of candidate necessary to win on such a compressed timeline would
have needed to be a candidate who is much less innately cautious than Kamala Harris's.
Remember, she didn't do mainstream media interviews for her first month.
She was very, very careful in what she said and how she said it.
If you're going to get to know people in that short a time period, you got to be more aggressive.
And while that caution has served her well in other parts of her career, it was exactly
the last thing you'd want in a candidate under these circumstances.
Yeah, I think she was way too cautious.
And I think it was quite proven, focused when she couldn't answer the question about what
would separate her from Joe Biden.
I think there was a telling event in this election season.
I asked a group that I spoke to the other night if they felt had Harris been elected,
would she have followed the trend of Biden's term and officer who she would have struck
out in her own direction?
And Harris supporters in that group split almost evenly, which to me is a very damning
testament that she, Harris, did not articulate.
Not only did she not separate herself from Biden, she didn't make it clear whether she
wanted to separate herself from Biden or not, and left voters somewhat confused and somewhat
muddled.
What do you think of the size of Trump's victory in the fact that Republicans have the Senate
and very well may have the House?
A surprise or not?
For me, it was a surprise.
I don't think I would have been surprised if either Trump or Harris had won in a close
race.
I think the size of the outcome, I have to admit, is not something I was expecting.
If that does end up being the case, and there's still a lot of votes being counted, if Republicans
maintain control of the House, and if Trump does maintain this level of advantage over
Harris in the polls, then this will probably be the most significant rightward movement
we've seen in our country since Ronald Reagan's election in 1980.
I was just going to say this.
There was a headline in the Los Angeles Daily News as we speak on today's paper asking if
LA County moved to the right a little bit.
The answer was no, not really, but some signs supporting the district attorney who was kicking
out, I should say, the district attorney who was very progressive, and supporting the initiative
for making it tougher on criminals.
That rightward swing that you're talking about nationally even affected a liberal location
like Los Angeles County.
Well, let's say that Los Angeles County has gone from indigo to very deep blue.
How about that?
Yeah.
I mean, I have to tell you, I was quoted in that article that I was mentioning, and I
said, look, it's an urban center, it's liberal, and it's not going to change for now.
I just said never say never.
It won't be next week.
It probably won't be when you and I are around, but it could happen because things change,
circumstances change, policies change.
But yeah, I don't think California is going to change much.
As we know, Governor Newsom is already in Washington trying to get support for what
he calls leading the resistance.
And after that, he'll probably be in New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Wouldn't be surprised.
Don't get me wrong.
You know, Gavin Newsom would much rather have Kamala Harris be president than Donald Trump.
But for his own political future, waiting another eight years is not something he would
have enjoyed doing very much.
Now he gets to run right away.
Now I'm going to ask you a prognostication question, which is before the election.
As we sit here today, obviously things will change.
Would another California liberal be able to grab the nomination of their party?
I think so.
I don't think that Democratic primary voters are going to make their decision based on
the fact that Harris and Newsom come from the same state.
That's not to say I think that Newsom will be the Democratic nominee for president in
four years.
I would just say sort of obviously he's got a much better chance of being the Democratic
nominee in 2020 than he would have Kamala Harris had won the election last week.
Yeah.
And of course, we don't know what's going to be going on on the Republican side since
Donald Trump will be termed out.
So that'll be an interesting battle.
Boy, I will say this, Joel, and I'll be interested in hearing your thoughts on it also.
I feel like the battle to succeed Trump in 2028 between what we'll call a pro-Trump Trump
wing of the party and a pre-Trump, more traditional conservative wing of the party, I think that
fight is going to make the Reagan, excuse me, the Goldwater Rockefeller fight look like
small ball by comparison.
And whether it's Nikki Haley and JD Vance or two other people we're not thinking about
today, to me, those two factions, both within the Republican Party, are going to have it
out in a big, big way.
Don't you think?
I think so too.
And I think that's great insight.
But my question for you as we sit here today, and I understand we're within the shadow of
Trump surprising both you and me and the size of the victory he had, is how strong is that
traditional part of the Republican Party?
Can they rally and raise a solid effort to try to take it away from the pro-Trump wing
of the party?
Well, I wish I don't know the answer to that.
Right now as we talk, they're weakened.
Well, let's also agree that there's a lot of pre-Trump, I'll use the term pre-Trump
Republicans, we could call them Reagan, Bush, Romney Republicans, if you like.
But a more traditional brand of conservative Republican, to a large degree, has fallen
in line with Trump.
And that doesn't necessarily mean that they would fall in line with JD Vance or Donald
Trump Jr.
If you decide that the no-one Trump wing of the party, or the pre-Trump wing of the party,
is only those never Trumpers who stood up in the last few years, Liz Cheney and John
Kasich and so on, then you're right.
That faction can't win.
But I suspect, and I'd be you to hear your thoughts, that there's a lot of Trump supporters
who are more comfortable with him than with Kamala Harris or Joe Biden, but would prefer
a more traditional brand of conservatism.
I think that's true.
I think there are a lot of voters who, to use the cliche, held their nose and voted
for Trump, probably on policy grounds.
But he's got a very strong personality.
It came across, it's come across for the last eight years.
The next Republican candidate may not be able to capture all of the Republican Party voters
who ended up voting for Trump.
And it could be a very interesting contested debate.
And of course, when you have an open seat and you have a contest for both the Republican
nomination and the Democratic nomination, it's going to be a good time for political
commentators like you, Dan.
Well, when you say a very spirited fight, I will say very, very brutal one.
But either way, I feel like the Republican Party is facing a great internal debate over
its next steps forward, which to me is fine.
That's what parties should do from time to time.
And I suspect the Democrats will be going through a very similar, although perhaps more
urgent process along the same lines.
So let me throw the ball over to you.
I've been asking you questions.
What topics do you think we should cover as we wrap up a look at this election 2024?
Well, my own feeling is that economic.
If you go back to the famous Ronald Reagan three legged stool of Republican politics,
economic conservatives, foreign policy, national security conservatives and social conservatives,
to me, those are the three issue blocks that will define the party going forward.
Which of the three, Joel, do you think will be the most important one as the Republican
Party makes its makes its way forward?
Well, I have believed and we've talked about this, that it's the economy's stupid line
that always seems to be most prominent with domestic elections.
However, maybe this is my personal point of view.
I think the foreign affairs issue could become very much highlighted depending on what happens
overseas and how Trump handles the wars that are going on, the relationships with China
and with Russia and with Iran.
And that could start to overshadow depending on how the economy works.
But I'll stick to the economy as the general answer, but keep my eye very warily on foreign
affairs.
Well, I agree with that.
At the risk of undermining ourselves completely.
That added to that, you really can't overlook the importance of social and cultural issues
in the Republican Party.
And social conservatives are often the most animated in the most involved party volunteers
and activists.
And in recent years, I'd say that the party's economic conservatives, while always a critically
and critical and vital piece of the Republican electorate, may not be as influential as social
conservatives.
And both clearly at this point in our history, we'll see if these changes, as you said, carry
a lot more weight than foreign policy and national security conservatives, which some
of us find less than ideal.
Yeah, I agree.
I agree with that.
What else you got there, Dan, as far as your views on the election?
Well, to me, we talked briefly about the young men who turned out for Donald Trump.
And to me, what's really remarkable, and I'd be eager to hear your thoughts, Joel, because
this is an economic argument, is just like Trump in 2016 was so successful at capturing
the frustration and sometimes resentment of a large number of working class voters who
felt that this new technology based economy is leaving them behind.
I feel like Trump did something almost identical in this election, saying to these young men,
look, there's a place for you in this economy, too, even if it doesn't seem like it right
now.
And Trump can be very combative and very confrontational.
That certainly makes up much of his public persona.
But that's a very aspirational message, don't you think?
Absolutely aspirational.
And I think he backs it up with some of his policy arguments, where he says, I'm going
to set tariffs, so we're going to bring jobs home to the United States, and there'll be
jobs for you, for this class of voters that you just described.
And I think he was very effective in doing that.
We will have to do a separate podcast at some point, if the powers that be will allow it,
to talk about the advisability of high tariffs and isolationism.
I'm still, I guess, a 20th century free trader who sees that as the key to economic success.
Both in the US and around the world.
But I'm also aware enough to know that that opinion, while it once reflected a majority
in our country, now reflects a very quickly shrinking minority in both the Republican
and Democratic parties.
Well, don't get me wrong.
I'm not endorsing the tariff idea.
I just thought that Trump's use of the tariff spoke to some of the young men that he, and
in his argument, that that would produce more work here in the United States, and they would
have more opportunity.
And I recognize that even out of the public policy school at Pepperdine, I'm at least
a political, you're a policy head.
So I'll stick to what I know best.
I'll stick to campaigns.
But given my ventures off into the policy world, I do believe that a Reagan-era internationalism
is in the country's best interests, and I don't know that either party's making that
as much of a priority as they need to right now.
Well, that's important to me too.
So you and I are in the same sinking boat.
The other thing that struck me about this election, Joel, is how many people didn't
turn out to vote.
Trump's support, Trump's overall vote levels, when all is said and done, will end up being
slightly higher than he's gained in his past elections.
Harris's vote totals are going to be much, much lower than Biden's, particularly in very
traditional democratic constituencies.
So Trump did win some voters over, but you asked at the very beginning of this, did someone
win or did someone lose?
We've talked a pretty good amount about what Trump did to win, but whatever Harris did
or didn't do, it drove an awful lot of loyal democratic voters, not to Trump, but to the
couch.
Yeah, I don't think she sold herself.
I don't think she sold her policies, and I don't think she sold herself as a potential
leader of the United States.
And I think that kept people home who did not want to vote for Trump and decided that
Harris was not a good alternative.
Right, as we learned a long time ago in campaigns, you need to do two things to win an election.
You need to motivate your base, and you need to reach out beyond that base.
If Trump had lost, he probably would have been criticized for spending so much time
motivating his base, he didn't reach out enough to swing voters.
But Harris, in her defeat, it's entirely possible she may have spent so much time trying to
reach beyond her base, she forgot to motivate loyal Democrats.
So Dan, we're going to wrap our podcast up.
And I wanted to throw a final opportunity to you.
I don't have a specific question, but anything that struck you, particularly you'd like
to comment on, any anecdote from the campaign or anything that in your observation was unusual
that you'd like to talk about as we close up here?
Hmm, anything unusual?
You mean, aside from the two oldest candidates in history running against each other, one
of them dropping out, the other one almost being assassinated.
No, I can't think of anything unusual.
Very typical campaign, wasn't it?
You know what was unusual about it to me, and I say this in the best sense, is you and
I got to spend this campaign with a bunch of incredibly smart young people at Pepperdine's
Graduate School of Public Policy.
And I don't mean to sound too shameless in my plug for this school, but getting to listen
to these really, really intelligent and insightful young women and young men talk about what
they were seeing from a different perspective and a different set of life experiences than
us two old guys, that to me was the most unusual and the most rewarding part of the campaign.
That's a terrific note to end on.
So Dan, we enjoy this whole semester of podcasts on surfing political waves here at Pepperdine.
Thanks so much for your great participation today and what you've done in the past with
the class and with the other guests that we've had.
So we'll be signing off now and thanks again.
Thank you, Joel.
And thanks to everybody at Pepperdine for helping us through this podcast series.
We really appreciate it.
Thanks for joining us for this conversation on surfing political waves.
For more engaging dialogue on politics and policy, visit Pepperdine School of Public
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