Opinion | How Can Biden Woo Moderates?

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Michelle, Trump just won his second victory in a row. And Nikki Haley, the moderate choice, seems to have fallen pretty far short of what she would have needed to build any momentum coming out of the state. So I wanted to talk about what that means for moderate voters here in New Hampshire and across the country. What was it like watching the results come in with Haley voters tonight?

So Patrick, Trump won. But if you were at the Haley watch party, Haley did well enough, and she had done better than people had expected coming in. And so she had her rally pretty early in the evening, where the votes were still coming in, but it was clear that she had overperformed a little bit. So a lot of her people were feeling pretty upbeat.

And then, of course, Haley got up and gave her speech.

And she gave a speech so it was like a victory speech.

This was not a kind of down-in-the-mouth, oh-well, defeat speech, and promised to go on, to stay in this race, to go forward. And this was enough for a lot of the hardcore fans who were there.

And you’ve been going around the state now the past few days, talking to Haley supporters. I’ve been at some of her events, too. And the question I have coming out of tonight, Michelle, is, where do you think those voters go from here? Like, is there a rally around Haley effect if she does stay in the race and she can kind of build some momentum?

Or do those voters just look at two wins in a row for Donald Trump and kind of throw up their hands, and then, hmm, do they start thinking about RFK, Jr.? Do they start thinking about Joe Biden? Do they start thinking about Donald Trump? Where do they go from here?

A lot of the people that I talked to have this whole — they just can’t bear the idea of, one, Trump, two, a Trump-Biden old geezer showdown in November. So until Haley drops, they’re going to cling to this. They are not trying to look at the next step.

There was one woman we talked to, coming out of the Haley event. She was in from Massachusetts. And she was like, just one election at a time.

So we just can’t think beyond that. You just take this one step at a time. And other people kind of have that approach as well. They’re not thinking long-term, because they can’t bear to think long-term.

God, I’m having deja vu, Michelle. It’s 2016 kind of all over again with the never-Trumpers and kind of the Stop Trump, and which state is it going to be where Donald Trump is able to be stopped in his tracks, and is it going to be Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio or John Kasich? Like, how is it going to happen?

And I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen this kind of hope before and this determination to kind of project your wishes onto an alternate candidate. But then you go to those Trump rallies and those Trump events like we were at on Sunday night in Rochester, New Hampshire, and that energy is palpable.

There was a guy who I was sitting next to who, every 10 minutes, would shout out, “I pray for you!” He just loved him. And you felt that in the crowd. Do you feel anything about how the supporters of Haley see her that feels different than how supporters of Ted Cruz or Rubio or John Kasich or Ron DeSantis once upon a time felt about their people?

No, but you’re looking at the Trump movement, which is just different than anything people have seen.

True.

He is the outlier here. And people are looking to Trump for something that is just fulfilling all of their needs. And it’s amazing to think about. I don’t think you’re going to get that with anyone else. I don’t think that is a fair comparison with Nikki or Biden or anyone.

That’s true. And when people are voting with their heads for one candidate, and they’re going up against another side, that’s heart, head, toes, guts. Every part of their body, they just want that guy in.

The question that I’m getting a lot from voters who I interview, who start interviewing me back from friends, others, is, is there anything that Joe Biden can do to win the votes of Haley supporters, other voters who just don’t want Donald Trump? Is there anything Joe Biden can kind of affirmatively do to win some of those people over like those you’ve been talking to in New Hampshire?

So the interesting thing, talking to the people at Haley events or just random stops — they don’t complain specifically about something that Biden has done. The ones that lean Republican just don’t like anything. They’re not going to vote for a Democrat, no matter what.

But the ones who are kind of more swing votes or soft Haley support who would be OK, maybe, or even voted for Biden last time, they just — they talk about that he’s too old.

I ran across one guy. And he was at a Haley rally. He voted for Biden last time.

So whatever their actual reasons or whatever their kind of meanness about Biden, they have focused on the age thing. So very few of them had any kind of substantive thing — well, he could do this or he could do that. They’d make the joke, well, he could be younger.

So I find it really hard to see what he could do to win these people over. Now, that said, when it comes crunch time and you have to pull the lever for Trump or Biden, a lot of these people are going to probably swallow it and turn out and vote for Biden. The question is who stays home. It’s not a question of who votes for Trump. It’s a question of who stays home.

Yeah. I talked to a few moderate voters who were going for Haley or were thinking about write-in votes. And the issues that they kept bringing up for me that were interesting were the border and also abortion. With the border, they really felt like Donald Trump had a point.

They want to see something from Biden on the border that, frankly, sounded pretty severe. And then, on abortion, they don’t want a national abortion ban. They don’t want something that is too extreme.

But what was interesting is they don’t necessarily identify Joe Biden as someone who is a full-throated defender of abortion rights. I don’t quite know how Biden gets those people or Trump necessarily gets those people, but I’m wondering if you heard anything on the issue, policy side, that suggested to you kind of a path forward for these moderate voters.

So Patrick, you know I am of the mind that it is vibe politics that drives presidential elections.

Policy. Policy. What are you talking to me about? [LAUGHS]

So certain issues like abortion can fire people up and drive them to the polls. And that, we have seen in the past couple of elections helping Democrats out. So the economy, people talk about, but it’s not even really how the economy is doing. It’s how they feel the economy’s doing.

The border is huge, especially for conservative voters, but doesn’t matter what the rates tell them or however many migrants are being allowed in versus being deported. If people feel like the country is out of control, if they feel unsafe, if they feel that crime is a problem, that kind of thing, it comes down to how people are feeling. And that’s really hard.

OK, I’m going to ask it to you this way, Michelle. If you were running against Donald Trump, what would be your strategy to woo moderate voters?

[SIGHS]: Why would you do this to me, Patrick? That is so wrong!

You know you’ve always wanted to run a campaign, Michelle.

I have, I have. So it’s just — it’s so hard to know, because you think that if you go hard at him — everybody wanted his Republican opponents even to go hard at him. But he just — he jujitsus that into — “I’m a victim. I am your vengeance. This is why they’re after me. The establishment hates me.”

Now, what he does that I think resonates and is something that other candidates should have been dealing with in both parties — he has tapped in to the very real sense that the system is not working. Like, he says it’s corrupt, and he — amusingly — thinks that he is the answer and presents himself as the answer to corruption.

But obviously, populism, with the whole idea that regular people are not being served well by a system that is broken, is something that the parties should have been addressing a long time ago. Now, I don’t know how you deal with it now. I mean, once you have this situation, I don’t know how you unprogrammed what he’s done. So —

It’s so hard, Michelle, because if you’re Joe Biden, you are the system.

You are the system. And Trump is the system. Come on. [LAUGHS]

No, Trump’s —

But he’s not, right?

Trump’s not — that’s the thing. A lot of people still see Trump as a disruptor. But god, how does Joe Biden make the system sexy? How do you make the establishment sexy?

Moderate voters like having rules and a system that works well. But for whatever reason, I think they do look at Biden, and they wanted him to be that bridge. They didn’t want him to just be —

They didn’t want him to dig in and stay for eight years. So he missed the moment to exit gracefully. And now, there are — a lot of them are mad about it.

Mm-hmm. So the Iowa caucuses are over, Michelle.

Praise Jesus, Patrick.

The New Hampshire primary is over. What are you hoping for at this point?

Well, I am a political junkie, so I’m hoping that the race continues.

Oh, my god!

I like a good primary to go on. I understand that South Carolina is not Nikki country, so to speak. I understand.

Her state, but not her country.

Yeah, it’s her state. It’s her home turf. But it is very Trumpy. So I’m kind of expecting this to peter out. If she’s doing very badly, does she drop out before they actually vote and avoid getting humiliated in her home state?

I’d like it to go for a little bit longer, just because I, like much of America, am not looking forward to two old geezers just doing this again for months and months. And what I expect to be a kind of grim, nasty election.

That’s the thing, Michelle. I’m really curious if Nikki Haley just goes into being kind of the noble warrior and just battles on for weeks or, like you said, if it just feels like it’s humiliation central and she’s got to bow out.

Her people want her to stay. I talked to people who — they are spinning the dream, the fantasy that it goes — what does everybody always want, Patrick?

Convention!

It’s gotta go to a convention floor fight!

Well, I look forward to —

You don’t look confident.

I’ve done five presidential campaigns, and I keep waiting for it to be thrown to the delegates at the convention.

Keep hope alive.

Keep hope alive.

And with that —

Thanks, Michelle.

Thanks, Patrick.