Biden Out, Harris In: “This Is Exactly What the Trump Team Feared”

MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks Bianna. Tim Alberta, thanks so much for joining us.

TIM ALBERTA, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: You’re welcome. Thank you for having me.

MARTIN: So one of the reasons we called you is that you have been closely watching the Trump campaign for some months now. I would go for so far as to say you’ve been kind of embedded with the Trump campaign. So what was the reaction when they heard that President Biden had decided to withdraw from his reelection bid and throw his support to Kamala Harris? What was the reaction?

ALBERTA: You know, I would say that they were pretty surprised. I don’t think they were shocked because they’d been thinking about this for a very long time. To be clear, I’ve written about how going back many months they were preparing for the possibility of a switch atop the Democratic ticket, well predating Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance in late June. But I think by the time the convention rolled around in Milwaukee, and it had been several weeks at that point since the debate, and Biden really seemed to be digging in and his top advisors were telling everyone that he was going to stick this out. I think the Trump folks had really reached the conclusion at that point that he was going to stay in, that he was going to be their opponent. So I think suddenly Sunday when the news came, they were pretty surprised and unpleasantly surprised I would add, because this was who they wanted to run against. Make no mistake, Joe Biden was the optimal target they felt for Donald Trump in this campaign.

MARTIN: And why is that?

ALBERTA: Well, I think that the fundamental frame that the Trump people had wanted to use in this election was about strength versus weakness. And certainly at a policy level, they’re going to talk about inflation at historic levels. They’re gonna talk about the southern border being overrun, they’re going to talk about geopolitical chaos around the world and how Biden is just too weak to handle all of this. But I think really in a more intimate, visceral way, they were going to seize upon Biden’s age and his visible decline to really try to paint Trump as this sort of macho forceful alpha compared to Joe Biden, who was feeble and sort of fading before our very eyes. And all of the polling that they were doing, all of the focus grouping that the Trump folks had done, all the modeling of different voters was really showing that to be a very effective strategy. And they felt like they had the Biden campaign kind of backed into a corner here. And if you talk to Democrats, they sort of believed the same thing. They just, they, there were a lot of folks close to Biden who were really beginning to question whether there was any path forward for him given the damage that he had already sustained.

MARTIN: You’ve written about the fact that they were actually talking landslide. They actually believed they were gonna have a landslide, at least in the electoral college, if not in the popular vote. Why were they so confident about that? What made them say that?

ALBERTA: Yeah, you know, I think it comes down to a couple of things. First, if you look at the polling that’s been done publicly, as well as the private polling that both parties have been privy to, it show – it has shown pretty consistently Trump with safe and growing leads across most of these battleground states. The core battleground states that both campaigns have been fighting over for some time. But then beyond that, what we’ve seen over the last six weeks or so are some real hints that other states that had been thought to be safely democratic – states like Minnesota, states like Virginia, New Hampshire – that they were coming into play. And this was not just spin from the Trump campaign. There were Democrats looking at the numbers concluding the same thing.

I think the other problematic element for Biden that Democrats were unable to look away from once they saw it, was just this chasm of intensity, enthusiasm between where the Republicans have been with the Republican base, sort of fully on board with Trump and donating lots of money and volunteering and coming out and really showing a united front around their nominee, versus Biden, who based on a lot of just sort of on the ground metrics that Democrats in these swing states have described to me, that their enthusiasm was really anemic. That they were really struggling to get their base voters, particularly young people, particularly young men of color, that they just could not get these people fired up about this election. And that there was a very real chance that those voters, some of them would actually defect to Trump. Not just sit out the election, but would actually switch and vote Republican. So I think the combination of those things was leading a lot of Republicans and some Democrats to conclude that we might be headed towards a landslide election.

MARTIN: So how does Harris disrupt that, those calculations?

ALBERTA: So let’s be clear, Kamala Harris is going to inherit some of Joe Biden’s baggage. That’s just inevitable because she is his vice president. You know, when it comes to questions around immigration, the economy, there’s no doubt that she’s going to take some of the hits there. Kamala Harris is two decades younger than Donald Trump, and what we know is that the Trump campaign was really counting on a sort of stamina test in this campaign that they were gonna be flying around the country, doing tons of events, that they were going to be running circles around Joe Biden, and that they were gonna be drawing this contrast in terms of energy and this sort of this display of how Republicans were the ones fighting for you while Democrats are sort of asleep at the switch. And Kamala Harris obviously is going to change that dynamic in a fundamental way. She’s going to hit the trail, she’s going to be out there and she’s going to be campaigning in settings and in ways that Joe Biden simply couldn’t.

MARTIN: Yeah. How about that baggage question? I mean, look, the Democrats have been leaning into policy. They’ve been, they’ve been saying that Joe Biden has delivered on what he promised, right? They say this has been one of the most consequential administrations, you know, in decades. You know, the Republicans, I think, have been arguing that they prioritize the wrong things. What they should have been prioritizing was the southern border and inflation, you know, overall. How does Harris deal with that?

ALBERTA: It’s a really interesting question because Democrats have tried from the top down for the past year to sell Americans on this idea of this administration having been incredibly successful, having passed really consequential legislation, having proven to be really competent in clearing some tough governing hurdles. And the public has just responded with a shrug. We’ve got a lot of polling, a lot of data points to show that Democrats really haven’t had any return on that investment. So it’s gonna be interesting to see just from a messaging standpoint, whether the vice president now taking over for the president, whether she is going to be just as insistent on running on these accomplishments of the past, or will she pivot and be more forward looking in this campaign. I mean, one of the maxims of political campaigning is that it’s always about the future, right? And so that is obviously one area where President Biden had really struggled. I mean, he just was not articulating any sort of coherent specific vision for what America would look like after four, after four more years of his presidency. That’s going to be, I think, an opening for Kamala Harris. But obviously the devil is in the details, and what is it that she is able to sell the American people on? Can she more effectively offer a vision than Donald Trump? That does in some ways change the very essence of the campaign, because so much of what Biden had been doing was talking about these last four years. I think obviously Harris will have to talk about the next four years.

MARTIN: I wanna ask you about a couple of key, key players in the Trump campaign, specifically Chris LaCivita. You know, people who do remember these things, remember that his Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against John Kerry in 2004, it is considered one of the most, you know, successful campaigns, and in some quarters infamous, you know, kind of the avatar for some people of kind of dirty politics in the modern era. So you reported that LaCivita was actually hesitant to join Trump’s campaign in the beginning due to his behavior. He said – you say that he initially felt alarmed during Trump’s 2016 rise and during the mob attack on the Capitol, which Trump, you know, promoted. What changed his mind?

ALBERTA: Well, look, I think Chris LaCivita, like so many others who have gone to work for Donald Trump in the past, they see an opportunity here to win the presidency. They see an opportunity to change the country. They see an opportunity to implement a vision for America that would run almost directly counter to the vision of the left and of the Democratic party. And so to varying degrees, they find themselves willing to accommodate themselves to Donald Trump and sort of set aside some of their qualms, some of their misgivings, and get in, climb into the foxhole with him. And once they’ve done that, I think in a lot of cases you see these folks on the Trump campaign, not just in 2024, but in 2020 as well, even in 2016, they start to internalize a lot of the attacks on Trump. They begin to find themselves sort of in more of a close bond with him as they see him coming under fire. And it creates this dynamic where people who were once highly skeptical of the man become some of his staunchest allies and some of his strongest defenders. And so I think that’s true for someone like Chris LaCivita. And he kind of, you know, says as much at times to me in the piece that you’re referencing. And I think that it’s also true for any number of people who have come into Trump’s orbit over the years. Some of them now having come out on the other side have talked about this, written about this themselves.

MARTIN: But I am curious about whether some of the things that he generally employs against his opponents, you know, the name calling, the nicknames, the kind of the personal attacks, is there any point at which they, they are concerned that that, that might not work against a Kamala Harris. That they’re just, there are too many people who might identify with her, who are important to them, like suburban women that they think, you know, maybe there’s a point at which even he can’t go?

ALBERTA: Well, look, there’s no question that campaigning against Joe Biden is not the same as campaigning against Kamala Harris. And the Trump campaign is certainly attuned to the sensitivities around attacking a woman of color versus attacking an older white man. And the question is really, is Trump attuned to those sensitivities? They can tell him to be careful. They can ask him to proofread his social media posts or to try to tone things down before going on stage at a rally. But ultimately, Donald Trump cannot be tamed. He is who he is and he has been the same man for a very, very long time. And everybody who goes to work for him recognizes that same thing about five minutes after they arrive. And so we’re going to see. There is definitely concern among Trump’s allies and across the Republican party about the pitfalls of running against Kamala Harris.

MARTIN: What are some of the differences that you’ve seen between the voter mobilization strategies employed by each campaign? Can you just talk a little bit more about what are those strategies, and what have they been on each side and how that might change?

ALBERTA: Sure. Well, the Biden campaign, now the Harris campaign, the Democratic Party has really run a very conventional large scale operation where they’re dropping, you know, hundreds and hundreds actually I think now over a thousand paid staffers into the states that are gonna decide the election. And these people are knocking on doors, they’re making phone calls, they’re handing out literature, they’re doing all of the traditional field operations, and they believe that ultimately the base of the Democratic party has not changed. And that those people will ultimately, when push comes to shove, turnout and vote for the Democrat, whoever it is at the top the ticket. The Trump campaign is thinking very differently. They are employing a much smaller nimbler field operation that’s really banking mostly on unpaid volunteers, trying to harness some of the enthusiasm in their party’s base to go out and do two things. Number one, to try to go out and find new pockets of Trump voters. People who are sympathetic to the MAGA movement, but who have not voted for Trump in the past. How many of those people really exist? We don’t know. But the Trump campaign thinks that there are quite a few of them, and they believe that they can go out, I identify those people and, and turn them out to vote in November. The other thing the Trump campaign is trying to do is they are very intent on siphoning away votes from the Democratic base, particularly black men ages 18 to 34, Latino men under 40, maybe under 45. There is a belief that working class minority men in particular are ripe targets for this Trump campaign in this political environment. And so what you’re seeing are a lot of micro-targeted efforts not necessarily knocking on those doors, not going to them physically, but reaching them digitally and through TV and mail, trying to get these folks who have, in many cases, no history of voting Republican to do so for the first time.

MARTIN: I wanna ask you about something you posted. You said that the most striking thing you heard from Trump allies, that they were second guessing JD Vance as a selection. What exactly did they tell you and why?

ALBERTA: Well, to be clear, JD Vance was seen as kind of a luxury pick for Donald Trump. This is someone who does not necessarily add the impact that you would look for in a really close election. So if you’re thinking about these suburban swing voters who are right on the fence and who could go either way, then there’s a strong argument to be made – and it was being made to Donald Trump by certain people close to him – that Marco Rubio would be a much better option. Even someone like a Nikki Haley. That was always going to be unlikely given the tumultuous relationship between her and Trump. But the point is, there were other options for Donald Trump that would’ve made a lot more sense on paper. That would’ve been probably more effective in reaching out to independents and moderate voters. JD Vance is really seen as someone who can energize the base and who can take Trump’s core message of populism right to the heart of, you know, these rust belt states and hammer home the idea that democrats have let down the American worker. That’s fine and that can still be effective. But I think a lot of Republicans worry that those voters were probably already gonna be in Trump’s category, that they were already going to be voting Republican, and that the upside of picking Vance is pretty limited relative to the upside of somebody else who might be able in a very close election to convince some of these other voters who are much less persuadable.

MARTIN: Before we let you go, is there a vice presidential contender that the Trump campaign is really worried about? Like who’s their, who’s their worst nightmare?

ALBERTA: Well, there are two names that have come up quite a bit, and that’s Mark Kelly, the senator from Arizona, Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania. Both of these guys are seen as a really effective counterbalance to Kamala Harris because they are more moderate than she is on a range of issues. They’re also men who represent battleground states that the Trump campaign felt like were really starting to slip away from the Democrats. And if either of those gentlemen were to join the ticket with Kamala Harris, they fear – Republicans fear – that those states would come right back into play. Particularly Pennsylvania, which might be the most important state in the entire election. So yes, those are the two names that you hear about a lot from the re, from Republicans and from people close to Trump. And I think if they’ve got the truth serum stuck into their veins and you ask them, who is the one person you really don’t wanna see? They would say, Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania.

MARTIN: Tim Alberta, thanks so much for talking with us.

ALBERTA: You’re welcome. Thank you.