Josh Kraushaar joins the podcast this week to help us look toward 2024. We discuss the likelihood of Joe Biden running again, including potential Democrat competitors. On the Republican side, we consider those who’ve thrown their hat in the ring and those whom we can expect to announce their candidacy next. We also discuss the state of the Republican party — how will the many factions shake out in the next couple of years and do we expect all to rally around the eventual Republican nominee?
Josh Kraushaar is the senior political correspondent at Axios and incoming editor-in-chief at Jewish Insider where he’ll be debuting a 2024 political column. His political journalism has been a trusted source for the public for well over a decade, spanning four U.S. administrations and dozens of midterm elections. Josh frequently appears as a political analyst on television and radio. He is a Fox News contributor and has co-anchored Fox News Radio’s election coverage since 2016.
TRANSCRIPT
Beverly Hallberg:
And welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg, and on today’s episode we look at election 2024. We’re going to discuss the likelihood of Joe Biden running again, including potentially some Democrat competitors. And on the Republican side, we’re going to look at those who’ve thrown their hat in the ring and who we can expect to announce their candidacy next. Finally, we’re going to discuss the state of the Republican Party, how many factions there are and how they will shake out in the next couple of years. Do we really expect all to rally around the eventual Republican nominee?
We have a wonderful guest to break it all down. Josh Kraushaar is the political correspondent at Axios and incoming editor-in-chief at Jewish Insider where he will be debuting a 2024 political column. So pay attention to that. His political journalism has been a trusted source for the public for well over a decade, spanning four administrations and dozens of midterm elections. He’s a Fox News contributor and has co-anchored Fox News Radio’s election coverage since 2016. He is a friend, and it’s just great to have you on, Josh. You’re one of my favorite people to listen to on elections, so thank you for coming on She Thinks today.
Josh Kraushaar:
It’s a real pleasure to be on the show, Beverly.
Beverly Hallberg:
And some people probably find what you do an interesting job because I think most people get tired of elections even though we are talking about the election in 2024, people just had the midterms. How is it that you got into this industry and do you ever get tired of covering elections?
Josh Kraushaar:
The only job I’ve ever really had as a journalist is covering campaigns and elections. I started off at the Hotline at National Journal. I went to Politico where I covered campaigns and elections and ran the show at the Hotline after that, and now I’m over at Axios. But no, you have to really enjoy to be in this line of work. Look, I’ve always felt that there is so much noise, there’s so much spin, there’s so much bad information out there in the world of campaigns and politics, and we see this every day. My job is to connect the dots to actually make it accessible, digestible, and understandable for a broad audience so they can actually enjoy politics and not feel frustrated and help illuminate who’s going to win, who’s running a good campaign, whose messages are really resonating with voters. So I’ve been doing that since, boy, about 2004. The 2004 presidential campaign was my first big election that I covered. The characters have changed, the issues have changed a little bit since then, but politics has always been alive and well, and there’s always been lots to cover.
Beverly Hallberg:
And social media has changed a lot since then. What has been probably the biggest takeaway seeing how candidates and even elected officials use social media to their advantage?
Josh Kraushaar:
Yeah, one of the big differences from 2004 is that candidates go directly to the public with their messages in a way that was not always the case 20 years ago. It can be hard … You have to really work at building relationships with campaigns, with candidates to get a sense of where they’re coming from because increasingly, many candidates don’t want to talk to the press or want to avoid being challenged. Look, I don’t think it’s good for the political world and the press to have such a hostile relationship. I think that’s increasingly the case on the Republican side these days. That’s a reality that the media has lost a lot of trust as well in the public’s eye. It’s important to regain that trust to have a healthy democracy.
But look, I think that social media has played a big role in that, where if you can just go directly to your voters, if you can speak to the base, if you don’t need to talk to the press, if you don’t need to be challenged, it makes it easier to play to the extremes. It makes it easier to rally the hardcore supporters, but lose sight of the middle-of-the-road voters that often make the difference in these important elections. Social media offers so much to improve both as a consumer and as a practitioner, but it also has, I think, degenerated the political conversation quite a bit in the last couple decades.
Beverly Hallberg:
And something that probably is a challenge for a lot of reporters, I’m curious how you navigate that, is when you are a straight reporter, you’re not somebody who gives opinion. How hard is it to not let your own perspective, your own bias just seep into the writing that you have? How do you keep yourself neutral?
Josh Kraushaar:
Look, I’m an analyst as well, sometimes it’s challenging. You’re trying to suss through the spin and give readers what’s really … giving them a sense of what’s really happening in Washington. And look, I think the most important thing is to do a lot of reporting, talk to people in the know, develop a deep roster of trusted sources so you can always get a good sense of what’s going on and really reality check some angles that you may be pursuing or story ideas that you’re putting together. It always helps to talk to as many people as possible, even if you don’t necessarily agree or you think that their spin is inaccurate or is off base. It’s important to have a wide network of sources and to talk to a whole lot of people from the Republican side or the Democratic side and all the different factions and interest groups in between.
Beverly Hallberg:
Let’s jump into the Democrat side. The big story over there is President Joe Biden, whether or not he is going to run again, a lot of people thought he would’ve already said at this point in time. Just for information’s sake, Biden turned 80 in November. We actually share the same birthday. We both were born on November 20th. I am younger than Joe Biden though, and by the time 2024 comes around, he’ll be almost 82. Talk to me about Joe Biden and what you’re hearing as far as whether or not he plans to throw his hat into the ring.
Josh Kraushaar:
To your question, all signs indicate that the president is planning to run for reelection. He’s already making moves on immigration and crime. He’s not vetoing this Republican bill that would overturn a very controversial DC crime law that would reduce penalties for some major crimes. He’s allowing that bill to get overturned. He’s taken a more moderate approach in the last few weeks on immigration, adopting elements of the Trump immigration plan, border security plan. Not only do I hear that he’s planning to run for reelection, but his actions as a future candidate are in sync with what you would expect for someone preparing for a 2024 campaign. Now, the big thing, Beverly, about the politics of 2024 is that Biden, as you note, is 80 years old. He would be 86 years old at the end of a second term, much older than any of our past presidents. And when you look at the polls, every poll that’s out there shows that Democrats don’t want Biden to run for reelection in large part because of concerns about that age and stamina and related health issues.
I’ve never seen such a disconnect between where the voters are in a certain party, in the Democratic Party, and where the leadership is. And everyone assumes, a lot of the punditry assumes that Biden, no one’s running against him. He’s going to have a clear path for renomination. But look, when you have that disconnect, when voters are expressing different views than the leadership, something usually does happen. There’s usually a vacuum that ends up being filled. I do expect Biden to be the Democratic nominee in 2024, but I also expect there to be some surprises along the way, that someone may challenge Biden other than Marianne Williamson who’s in the race on the Democratic side. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an enterprising outsider who maybe wanted to camp out in New Hampshire where Biden not only did poorly in the 2020 race, but punished the state party as well. There are some interesting opportunities if you’re an entrepreneurial Democrat running to the left perhaps and looking to challenge Biden in a way where he hasn’t faced much opposition at this point.
Beverly Hallberg:
So would you say that the established Democrats are going to stay out of this? I know we talked about Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, potentially. Of course, he might have a few senators, Democrat senators who might jump in the race. Are these just nixed by the Biden administration and those who are pushing him out there?
Josh Kraushaar:
I don’t think if Biden gets a serious challenger, I don’t think it’s going to be from an elected official because they’re not going to want to jeopardize their careers if they don’t win. That’s what would happen. If Gavin Newsom or Pritzker or anyone challenged Biden and didn’t win, it would be problematic for their political future. But there are a whole lot of outsiders, especially on the progressive side of the party. Stacey Abrams. What is Stacey Abrams doing after losing the Georgia Governor’s race? She has some time on her hands. Maybe she could camp out a New Hampshire and run to Biden’s left and make some noise. I’m not saying she will, but that’s the type of candidate, someone who isn’t in elective office, on the left, and may be able to excite the base if the situation presented itself.
Beverly Hallberg:
So when polling shows that Democrats don’t want Joe Biden due to his age, why is he still the front-runner? Why are Democrats putting their chips behind him when the public doesn’t seem to want him?
Josh Kraushaar:
There are a lot of reasons, but I think the most evident one is that the known of Biden’s age, which is a vulnerability, is better than the known unknowns of what would happen if Biden stepped aside. And you would either have Kamala Harris as the front-runner, or you would have a very, very messy, very ideological civil war within the party with the progressives versus the moderates with a bunch of people trying to take out the sitting vice president. That is a very, very problematic situation. In a way, the Democrats have put themselves in a little bit of a bind that… Harris’s numbers are even worse than Joe Biden’s. She would be the early front-runner, though I think a lot of Democrats have questions about whether she would actually be able to run an effective campaign if that situation presented itself.
I think the Democrats feel like Biden’s age, it’s a problem, but if he’s running against Trump who’s also old, and if you can see the matchup as between Biden versus Trump or Biden even DeSantis, you could overcome that challenge. I think the odds of a Harris or a very progressive candidate emerging in an open field would actually probably give Democrats a worse chance. The most promising Democratic prospects in the future are folks that might be ready for 2028, like a Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, or a Raphael Warnock who just got reelected in Georgia. The list of candidates in 2024 if Biden stepped aside, would not be quite ready for primetime.
Beverly Hallberg:
Something that I’ve wondered as we’ve seen this administration unfold and seeing how Kamala Harris just really has struggled so much in her job, I’ve actually been surprised how poor she is at communicating. She’s worse at it than I thought she was. And I’ve wondered if he had actually chosen, let’s say, an Amy Klobuchar who also ran for the nomination. Pick somebody who is good on camera, speaks well, usually does a good job, fairly moderate as far as Democrats go. Do you think we’d be looking at a different story if he had a stronger vice president behind him and seen that person actually try to take the baton and run this time?
Josh Kraushaar:
That’s hard to say though, Beverly. There was a moment where Amy Klobuchar was the front-runner to be Biden’s running mate, and then what happened was… the George Floyd killing happened in June of 2020, and there was a real push. Actually Klobuchar had some issues on the left with criminal justice reform, and on the left there was a real push for Biden to pick an African American woman as his running mate in Harris was sort of the obvious choice on that front. Look, I think Biden still will be committed to… you never want to step aside voluntarily. I don’t know, even if he had a more politically savvy running mate, whether that would’ve changed his own thinking, but certainly there would be a more natural transition, a more natural sense of things if you had a Klobuchar or maybe a more moderate… a Democrat with a little more political skill in that running mate in that vice presidential position.
Beverly Hallberg:
Let’s go ahead and move over to the Republican side. We’re going to wait for Trump till the end. So he of course has thrown his hat in the race, but we also have Nikki Haley, we have Vivek Ramaswamy who have joined the race. I want to focus on Nikki Haley first. Now, she is someone who was a former governor of South Carolina. She’s probably most well known for removing the Confederate flag from the grounds of the South Carolina capitol. So she’s notable for that. She also worked for the Trump administration as the US Ambassador to the UN, so she has the credentials. One of the things that I have found interesting about her announcement though was that she focused very much on being a woman and also on being of Indian descent, that her parents are immigrants. And we even heard some of the language talking about what she can do in heels.
And I will say just as a female, it rubbed me a little bit the wrong way because I would rather her just be there on her merits, which are enough. People can tell she’s a woman. I think talking about her immigrant background is a good thing to discuss, but it did seem like she fit into this identity politics arena that most Republicans try to push against. So I was just curious of your take on her announcement. I do think the one thing that helped her was Don Lemon, who made a very sexist comment towards her and that worked well for her in the end. She got a lot of PR off of that and a lot of play. But curious on what you think about her messaging?
Josh Kraushaar:
It’s interesting because I heard some of what you just said that there were some conservatives who didn’t like the fact that she leaned a little bit into her identity as the one woman running for president on the Republican side. On the other hand, she triangulated on that issue where she started out her campaign video kicking off the race saying she was a brown girl in a black and white world, but did not let that define her. So I think in her campaign’s view, she was talking about her story, but also not leaning into the sense of victimization that you often hear in progressive circles. I think if you ask, her campaign, they view it as not… mentioning her, who she is, but not leaning into the identitarian politics. Although a lot of other conservatives I talked to had the same reaction as you did. It is a Rorschach test, if you will, on how you view those issues.
The bigger challenge for Haley is she’s running as like GOP classic. She’s running to be a throwback to the Reagan Bush Republicanism of the past. She would never say that perhaps, but her issues and hawkish foreign policy, entitlement reforms, free trade. This is the classic conservatism that was dominant for many, many years until Donald Trump won the Republican nomination. And her bet is that there’s still a market for that within the Republican Party and that Trump is fading, and the MAGA movement is not a majority of the party. The bet made certainly by Trump, but even Ron DeSantis, who’s not yet in the race but is starting to make his presence felt, the bet they seem to be making is that the energy and the majority of the party is much more MAGA than GOP classic.
I think fundamentally, if Haley’s going to have any success, it depends on Republicans wanting to return to the more traditional conservative movement, want to return to the era of winning elections more often than not from the Reagan era to the Bush era. And that this sense of grievance politics that Trump has really, really brought to the fore. And the difference in policy views, whether it’s a more restrained foreign policy to protecting entitlements and not making reforms, not cutting spending. Those are very Democrat… if this was 2002 after 9/11, those would’ve been very Democratic Party positions. You would’ve thought Donald Trump and his movement were on the left wing of the Democratic Party on that front. We’ve seen a little bit of a realignment, and now those are issues that drive the MAGA base of the Republican Party, and Haley is going to have a challenge overcoming those headwinds.
Beverly Hallberg:
The messaging that was the turning point for me was when she was talking about, “And I can do it in my high heels,” it was very girl boss. And I’m like, “You could talk about being a female and being the only female.” It was just a little kitschy. I was like, “You don’t need that.” That was just my own perspective on it. But I want to talk about something in comparison to her. So obviously as we mentioned, she worked for the Trump administration. Two other people who are potentials of entering in this race have worked for Trump as well. You have Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State, and you also have Mike Pence, of course, the former vice president. How do these individuals, Nikki Haley included, and we’ve already seen her efforts, how do they navigate this, taking on Trump when they also worked for him?
Josh Kraushaar:
So Beverly, they haven’t like that and maybe Pence a little more than the others, but the reality is that Trump is the front-runner right now in the polls and in the reality of the Republican Party. And none of the candidates running against him have challenged Donald Trump on policy, on issues, on substance. I’m getting a lot of 2016 déjà vu where Republicans ended up attacking everyone else but Trump and Trump was able to romp ahead by winning, what, 40% or so of the primary vote. Not a majority, but he won the nomination because he was the guy that consolidated his base while everyone else was fighting for the scraps that were still out there. And look, the domination is going to run through Trump, whether it’s DeSantis or Haley or Pompeo, anyone who served his administration, they’re going to have to say why Trump shouldn’t be renominated. If they don’t make the case, Trump is going to win the nomination.
Beverly Hallberg:
Do you think it’s fair game to talk about his personality and his communication style? How is that going to resonate with voters if they say, “Look, we agree on a lot of the same policies, but we need a better approach. We need to disagree in agreeable ways.” Is that something that’s going to resonate?
Josh Kraushaar:
It’s what’s tough and why Republicans aren’t going after Trump, is that they don’t want to be the one person to be attacked personally and get into a cage match with the former president because he fights back. But at the same time, if there’s not… your question is a really, really important one, because if you’re not making the case, if you’re drawing a contrast, it’s just hard to see how…
If Trump is consolidating the 35, 40% of the party that is in the MAGA world and everyone else is in their own space and not directly challenging that, and you have a lot more candidates right now in that more traditional side of the party, that is going to be just a basic math problem, a basic math problem for any Trump challenger. And I think the most effective way, and you see this with Haley, and this gets to your question, Beverly, the most effective way is just raising questions over electability, maybe age. Haley did it in a very passive-aggressive way. She wanted to implement a mental test for anyone over the age of 75. I don’t know. She should just say, “Trump is too old” or Biden. There’s a little passive aggressiveness there that I don’t think is effective. Just say you don’t think Trump-
Beverly Hallberg:
Or we need a new generation of young leaders.
Josh Kraushaar:
New generation. “Trump did great, but we need a new generation of leadership.” She’s afraid, and a lot of other Republicans are afraid directly to make that case. The electability case and the age case I think are the biggest vulnerabilities in the Republican Party for Donald Trump.
Beverly Hallberg:
And of course, people think the one most suited to take on Donald Trump as Ron DeSantis, we expect him to announce his nomination. He has a book out currently, he’s going on the book tour, so maybe it will happen after that. As far as taking on Trump, I think he has… First of all, he never worked for him so that. Trump has already bashed him, given him nicknames. So there’s already that back and forth going on. And obviously what DeSantis can point to is what he did in his state during COVID and could make the argument that he handled it better than Trump handled the country.
And so how formidable of opponent is DeSantis and what does this do to Republican voters? So I’ll be honest with you, Josh. I don’t live in DC anymore. I live in red South Carolina. I’ve been talking to some voters here who were Trump voters, and all of the ones I’ve talked to have said they would prefer DeSantis. They’ll definitely vote for Trump if he’s the nominee, but they’re hoping he’s not. Now, maybe that’s just the people that I know have a certain perspective, but these are very red voters, were very disappointed when Trump didn’t win in this last election cycle. But that’s what I’ve been hearing.
Josh Kraushaar:
DeSantis on paper is a very formidable candidate because as you said, Beverly, he’s achieved great successes in a one time swing state, in terms of fighting the wars and winning them, especially on the cultural side. And that is what’s propelled him to the top of the national conversation. Now, I think there’s some… he’s not a candidate yet, and Trump has done this before twice, and DeSantis hasn’t faced the national scrutiny that comes with a presidential campaign. And I think there are some justified worries that he may not have the charm or the likability, as one Trump campaign official put it to me last week. There’s a likability question that is going to come up, and DeSantis is going to have to prove he can connect at the town halls in New Hampshire, at the coffee shops in Iowa. He’s going to have to show that people want to have a beer with him, the beer test. That tends to be a good predictor of who people like as their presidential candidates. I think that’s a legitimate challenge.
I also think that there’s… for all the successes he’s had in Florida, he hasn’t had to deal with foreign policy, and he’s been very nervous or very, very shy about engaging on those issues that are going to be issues that Trump is going to bring to the forefront. Trump is running as an isolationist … one of these types who… he certainly wants to defund and withdraw from US military support of Ukraine. That’s a big issue. DeSantis traditionally in the House has been a hawk on foreign policy. So he’s been very reticent to engage in those substantive issues, and he’ll have to have a strong answer on where he stands. And it may involve alienating some of… the Republican Party on foreign policy is divided pretty evenly right now, so DeSantis is going to have to pick sides, and he risks undermining the principled conservative leader if he tries to have it both ways. And we’ve seen a little bit of that so far. So that that’s going to be something he’ll have to deal with as well.
But look, in terms of fundraising, in terms of potential support, in terms of being able to straddle both the MAGA wing and the traditional conservative wing of the party, DeSantis looks really good on paper. But the question is… we’ve seen a lot of candidates that look good on paper. They can raise money, that look like they can appeal to different parts of the party, and then when they’re actually dealing with the press or dealing with voters in these tough settings, it’s a lot more difficult. I want to see DeSantis outside of Florida actually doing give and take with voters in those early states before making any firm assessments on how strong a campaign is going to run.
Beverly Hallberg:
One of the things that has been discussed is how many Republicans are likely to enter this race. The more that you have entered, the likelihood is that Trump will be the winner. You’ve already had Ronna McDonald, the chair of the RNC, talk about maybe having a pledge where people on the stage in order to debate and the Republican debate have to promise to throw their support behind the eventual nominee. Trump did not agree to do that last time. He was the one who didn’t raise his hand. So how does the Republican Party and the different factions, how does this play out? Where are conservatives, where are Republicans? For those who say, “We just want a Republican no matter what,” what should they hope for as far as how many people enter the race? I know that’s a ton of questions at once, but just your thoughts on that.
Josh Kraushaar:
It’s a two-part question, these are really important questions. I think the first is that the difference between the Republican Party now and where it was, say, 10 years ago, it used to be that the Democratic Party was a bunch of different identity groups. There were groups that didn’t really agree on everything, but they awkwardly worked together for the same goal. And the Republican Party was just the conservative party. It was easier, there were different points of emphasis for different Republicans, but it was a much more ideologically cohesive party for a long, long time. But that’s not the case anymore. There’s not a lot of issues, frankly, that Republicans agree on, whether it’s spending levels or entitlements or foreign policy or even the culture wars in some cases. Most Republicans are pro-life, but where you draw the line is a really hot point of debate right now.
So there’s not many issues that Republicans agree on, and it’s really about, like you said, putting together who could win over these different groups and building a majority coalition. And it’s not easy because it’s hard to bridge the MAGA folks with the Larry Hogans of the world, or even the Glenn Youngkins of the world. There is a big gap between Glenn Youngkin’s rhetoric and his governing strategy in Virginia and Donald Trump’s. So that is going to be the Republican Party’s biggest challenge.
Now, as far as the size of the field, I think it’s sort of a Catch 22. It’s a little bit of a fraught question. Because if you think Ron DeSantis is the best candidate ever, and he’s going to be the guy that takes out Donald Trump and he’s the guy to support, then of course you want a smaller field because you would want DeSantis to not lose any support, maybe to his center and be able to consolidate that anti-Trump vote. But there are a lot of Republicans that are not convinced Ron DeSantis is going to be the greatest of candidates. And if you want to hedge your bets a little bit as a Republican donor or even as a Republican strategist, you may want some more candidates that speak to those same issues, but may have a stronger political skillset. Nikki Haley is someone, I think that’s what her message is. She is not as hard-edged as Ron DeSantis, but she has a more appealing message to the moderates and independents that make the difference in elections.
You don’t want too many because that would split the… then they’re all going after each other, and you’d have a repeat of 2016, but you don’t want… unless you think Ron DeSantis is a hundred percent guaranteed to be a very, very good candidate, you probably want some other folks in there to hedge the bets if you’re not a fan of Donald Trump.
Beverly Hallberg:
And when do we expect most people to announce their candidacy, how much longer?
Josh Kraushaar:
I expect in April, May. I think DeSantis is probably going to announce in June if he gets in. The lot of candidates like to put up really big fundraising numbers, and oftentimes they’ll get in when that quarterly deadline begins at the beginning of April. I expect April you’ll see another wave of candidates. I also think that there’s some folks on the sidelines that want to see how Trump and DeSantis interact with each other and want to see how good of a candidate, they really want to see if DeSantis can handle the national attention effectively. And if he doesn’t, someone like a Glenn Youngkin or Mike Pence even might wait and take some extra time to see how that matchup fares before committing to a presidential campaign.
Beverly Hallberg:
And final question for you, Josh. I’m not sure if you’re a betting man, but is your money on another Trump-Biden election?
Josh Kraushaar:
Boy, you’re putting me on the spot there, Beverly.
Beverly Hallberg:
It’s okay. You can not answer. But I’m just curious of your gut.
Josh Kraushaar:
I’ll be honest, a month ago I thought… If I had to put odds on the Republican, at least the Republican side, I would’ve bet the field over Trump. I would’ve said “Trump maybe has a 35% chance of being the nominee again,” but I would’ve bet everyone else if that was the bet. It’s pretty clear Trump has both gotten momentum in the last month, and also Republicans don’t have a strategy on how to deal with that. So because of those two things, I think Trump has at least a 50/50 chance, if not even a little bit better at this moment. And that’s not where I was a month or two ago. As far as Democrat, I think Biden is going to be the nominee. I have no doubt. The question is, is there a little bit of turbulence along the way, or is it a smooth sailing for him?
Beverly Hallberg:
We have a lot of time left before 2024, but yet things seem to go very quickly. We’ll be here before we know it, so it’s always good to chat with you and get the breakdown. Josh Kraushaar the senior political correspondent at Axios and incoming editor-in-chief at Jewish Insider, check him out there. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it.
Josh Kraushaar:
Thanks, Beverly.
Beverly Hallberg:
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