The following is a lightly edited transcript of the October 23 episode of The Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
With two weeks to go until election day, the presidential race couldn’t be closer. But if Kamala Harris is to win, how exactly would that happen? What’s the path to defeating Donald Trump? Veteran political journalist Ron Brownstein has a new piece in The Atlantic laying out what Harris’s path to victory does look like. The short version is that she has to run up truly massive margins in cities and affluent suburbs while limiting Trump’s gains among nonwhite and working-class white voters. That may sound unsurprising, but the details on how this might actually unfold are complicated, interesting, fraught with bizarre uncertainties, and actually plausible, if difficult. So we invited Brownstein on the show to explain all of it. Great to have you back on, Ron.
Ron Brownstein: Greg, thanks for having me again.
Sargent: The basic geography of this race is that the most plausible path for Harris is to win the blue wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin as always. This requires piling up huge margins in places like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Madison, and Detroit. But critically, you report that the Harris campaign actually believes they have room to grow in the suburbs around these places because suburbanites, women in particular, are really recoiling from Trump right now. Can you walk us through all these details?
Brownstein: Trump won the three states by a little less than 80,000 votes. Biden won them by about 260,000 votes. Each time, they were the pivot. I still believe they are the pivot. Now, Harris is a lot more competitive than Biden was in the Sun Belt battlegrounds of North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada, but it’s not clear that she can actually get over the top in any of them except Nevada, which means that, in all likelihood, the most comfortable path—let’s put it that way for Democrats—is winning Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, states with a lot of similarities economically, culturally, demographically.
If you go back to 2020, Biden improved a little over Hillary Clinton in the big urban centers, but the big gain for him were in white collar suburbs around those major cities. The four suburban counties outside Philadelphia, he blew the doors off in those counties.
Sargent: Ron, you calculated that Biden won those four counties by almost 300,000 votes total, right?
Brownstein: Yes, 115,000 votes more than even [Hillary] Clinton did. Same thing, Oakland County outside of Detroit—the white collar bookend to Macomb County, which is the blue collar suburb of Detroit that became famous in the 1980s as the home of the Reagan Democrats; we, at some points in the ’90s, talk about Oakland as the home of the Clinton Republicans, and it’s moved further toward the Democrats—Biden won that by about twice as big a vote margin as Hillary Clinton did. Then you have the so-called WOW counties—Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington—outside of Milwaukee. Biden lost them by about 10,000 votes fewer than Clinton did, and pushed up the margin in Gaines County, which is Madison, and its prosperous, very white collar suburbs. That was how Biden won the states.
Now, if you think about where we are in 2024, Trump is going to do very well in Trump country. He’s running this time against a woman of color rather than the 80-year-old Catholic white guy. They have pounded her pretty effectively in October, in a way that I’m not sure they fully responded to effectively as their generic take-off-the-shelf campaign against any Democrat. She’s a cultural liberal extremist who won’t keep you safe on crime and immigration. It would not surprise me if, in the smaller parts of smaller communities across all three states, which are mostly populated by white voters without a college degree, that Trump increases his margins a little bit, at least a little bit over what he had last time.
Then you’ve got the central cities, and that is a crucial battlefield because we have all this conflicting polling information about whether Trump really is on track to improve with noncollege, nonwhite voters, especially men. My sense, after being in Detroit, is that a lot of those voters are feeling really economically squeezed by the last four years. I would not be shocked if he did at least a little better, although probably not as well as a lot of these polls are suggesting.
Sargent: In those suburban areas around Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Madison, Detroit, there’s room for Harris to grow. Where are we now, where do think she can get to, and why is there room to grow?
Brownstein: The pincer movement from Trump [is] stronger in the small towns, maybe a little bit stronger in the central cities. How does Harris respond? She has to max out in those big inner suburbs. In 2022, all of the governor candidates in those states—Whitmer, Shapiro, Evers—ran better among not only ... especially they ran better among college educated white women than Biden had done two years earlier. They generally ran a little better among college men than Biden had done two years earlier, and most of them ran even better among college, noncollege white women who are plentiful in these suburbs too. Now, 2022 was the first election after Dobbs. Dobbs had not happened yet in 2020. Trump was not quite as openly xenophobic, racist, authoritarian, and vulgar as he has been in that period. So if you look at the precedent of 2022, at the governor’s races in particular, the message it sends is that Biden 2020 is not the ceiling for Harris in these white-collar suburbs that are very populous around the major cities. She has the opportunity to, and may very well need to, increase her vote in those places to offset what could be further consolidation of Trump country and at least some cracks in the armor or in the wall inside the central cities.
Sargent: Ron, let me bring something up here. Those three candidates in 2022—we’re talking here about Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer—were running against MAGA candidates. But now Trump himself is on the ballot, right? The threat in the minds of these educated affluent suburbanites is more acute. Is that part of the reason that you think that Harris can squeeze a little more out of these places than even those three?
Brownstein: Well, I’m not sure she can squeeze more than those three, but she probably doesn’t have to squeeze more than those three. Don’t forget, even in these affluent places, there are blue-collar white areas where Trump is probably going to turn out a higher share of the vote than we saw in 2022. But the general movement in these places, I don’t think has stopped. Just think about Dane County...
Sargent: With Trump on the ballot, right?
Brownstein: Right. With Trump on the ballot. Even without Trump on the ballot. From 2018 to 2022, if you look at Dane County and Oakland County—two big iconic examples of this; Dane being Wisconsin and Oakland being Michigan—Tony Evers went from 75 percent of the vote in Dane in 2018 to 79 percent in 2022. Seventy-nine percent.
Sargent: Amazing.
Brownstein: Biden was only 75 [percent], and Hillary was about 70. Hillary was 70 in Dane County. Biden was 75. Evers pushed it to 79. That state Supreme Court election last year, which was about abortion, the liberal candidate won 83. Dane is the only place in Milwaukee, in the state, that’s really adding a significant number of people. Now, all three of these states—I can’t speak as authoritatively about North Carolina and Georgia, but I think it’s true there too—Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, have a lot of what the democratic and progressive political strategist Mike Lux calls factory towns. It has midsize cities like Eau Claire and Green Bay and Erie and Scranton and Flint and Saginaw. Many of those places vote majority Democrat, right? Harris cannot suffer real erosion there. But I’ve got to think that for her campaign, holding the line in those places will be a victory. The place that seems to me most obvious where she can improve on what Biden did in 2020 and thus offset any erosion in the pincer—a little more problems in the inner city and a little more problems in Trump country—are these white collar suburbs that are very populous. We saw in 2022 voted more democratic than they did even in 2020. And in 2020, they were more democratic than 2016. The ball is still rolling.
By the way, Greg, it’s important to [mention]—it’s data we don’t often talk about—even Biden didn’t do as well in Pennsylvania in those midsize cities as he did in Michigan and Wisconsin. My theory is that the collapse of the coal and steel industry has left Western Pennsylvania even more alienated and marginalized. There’s still an auto industry, for example. It may be smaller than it used to be, but it’s still functional. It still employs a lot of people. Steel industry in Western Pennsylvania is a particular problem; as you say, Harris has put a lot of effort in there. Of the three states in many ways, as has been the case all year, Pennsylvania looks the toughest. But this is an equation that can work for her in all three places—if she can hold down her losses in Trump country, or maybe offset any margin decline with turnout increase in the big cities, and then further grow beyond even what Biden did in 2020 in these big population, adding white collar suburbs.
Sargent: Ron, you sometimes hear pundits argue that Harris should stop putting so much effort into attacking Trump as a threat to democracy and highlighting his authoritarianism, that the economy and health care will matter more to swing voters and so forth. But in your reporting, you’re finding that this large reservoir of voters, right-leaning moderates, independents, pretty affluent suburban, are absolutely gettable with messages about Trump’s authoritarianism. They’re deeply troubled and motivated by the anti-democratic threat Trump poses, right? Those voters are there. They’re a big growth opportunity for Harris still, and they are the swing constituency now, or at least one of them. Would it be malpractice not to go after them in this way?
Brownstein: Big is a strong word, in terms of how many voters we’re talking about on any front. But yes, I thought her appearances with Liz Cheney this week were a precision-guided missile aimed at exactly the voters she needs in exactly the places where they are most concentrated with exactly the message that will move them. I thought it could not have been more precisely targeted at what she can actually achieve.
She has made progress on the economy, particularly on questions of “Who fights for you?” But in the end, the share of voters who think that they were better off under Trump’s policies than Biden’s policies before Covid is an insurmountable obstacle if the frame of the election is solely “Who is going to deliver more for your bottom line?” She’s gotten more competitive on that, but if that’s the question people are asking the last week and going into the ballot box, I don’t think she can get there. But there’s no reason for that to be the question, right? Trump, every day, shows you why that shouldn’t be the question.
Sargent: Right, but there is a bit of a split-screen effect here. Harris is making these major appeals to affluent suburbanites, Republican-leaning, educated women, and so forth on the anti-democratic threat on how disgusting Trump is and what a menace he is, but an immense amount of resources is going into Democratic ads about the economy, touting her plans to reduce childcare costs, health care costs, home-buying costs, etc. Much of the ad spending is going to that according to some analysis I’ve seen. That’s aimed at these more working-class voters, both nonwhite and white. How do we make sense of these two tracks happening at the same time? Are all those ads just an effort to just contain Trump’s advantage while they win the election or try to win it on the anti-democratic stuff? How do we think about this?
Brownstein: Just think of it as different tracks aimed at different voters. In 2012, [I was] writing a story about how Obama was focusing on Romney as a plutocrat who closed the factory in town in the Rust Belt battlegrounds, which by then included Ohio, and running more on values in the Sun Belt battlegrounds. You have to be able to communicate to multiple audiences at the same time. As we said, all votes are fungible. For Harris in the former blue wall states, so I always put that former in there to distinguish, she has to get into the mid 40s among the noncollege white women. She can grow then among the college white women, try to hold her own among the college white men. And then she could withstand some erosion among the blue-collar white men and Black men.
Don’t forget, the paradox is that these states look best for her because generally speaking, Harris, like Biden before her, is holding the 2020 levels of support more among whites than nonwhites. College-educated white women, Greg, are three to four times as big a share of the electorate across these three states as Black men. So if she can increase, I hope my math isn’t wrong here, five or six points among college white women in these states—which don’t forget Biden won—she could withstand losses of 15 points, I think, among the Black men, which is not going to happen.
Sargent: I may be a delusional optimist, Ron, but that seems doable to me. It seems like some of the numbers are showing that. What am I missing?
Brownstein: What we’re missing is two things. One, the potential of a collapse among the noncollege whites, which is what happened in 2016, even more than 2020, where so many Trump-supporting noncollege whites came out in these states. Dave Wasserman, my friend at the Cook Report, has documented that the nonvoting pool in these states leans more toward those blue-collar whites. The big risk is that Trump turns out more of them than anybody’s expecting—you’ve had pollsters on, who are going through exorbitant lengths to try to deal with that possibility.
Sargent: I know. They’re trying so hard to reach those voters, Ron.
Brownstein: They are. They’re trying hard. But look, you never know until it happens. The other risk is that in this very gender-divided world, she suffers more than a minimal erosion among the college men. Usually in modern politics, until Trump has started putting this pressure on Black and Latino men, the two biggest cross-pressured groups were the college white men and the noncollege white women, because they are where gender and education, which are the most powerful forces, pull in opposite directions. Democrats have gotten to a point where they’re running about even with the college white men, sometimes winning them. They lose the noncollege white women, but they do better among them in the Rust Belt states than they’re doing in the Sun Belt states. The path isn’t crazy. You can see the path for how this works out for her, particularly in Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The question is whether that Trump country in Pennsylvania gets so bad that you can’t overcome it, even with really strong performances. You and I have argued about this, and many people have argued about it and what other ramifications would have been, but I have felt, since day one, that on October 25, she will have wished she picked Josh Shapiro. I still feel that way as October 25 is coming.
Sargent: Well, it certainly looks plausible. I do want to talk to you about abortion and men. You brought this up a second ago. James Carville said on this podcast that a sleeper constituency is college-educated white men who have been awakened to the threat that the rolling back of reproductive rights poses to their daughters and other female loved ones. You found this as well. As we said, Biden really maximized democratic support among suburbanites, but it does seem as if Harris might be able to get more of these Dobbs dads, as they’ve been labeled. Can you talk about that?
Brownstein: Again, in 2022, Shapiro, Whitmer, and Evers all ran better among college white men, according to the exit poll, than Biden had two years earlier. First election post-Dobbs. Now, [with] presidential election, other factors are at play. These men, probably most of them would say in a poll, think Trump is better on the economy. But they are an important constituency for not only the abortion message but the democracy chaos message. These are men who basically like order in their lives. They don’t think the system needs to be blown up. College white men are the most likely of anybody in society to own stock, and it has not been a bad couple of years for people who have stocks in their 401k. They’re all bigger than they were a few years ago. They may have doubts about whether Harris has enough experience. They may have disappointment over the inflation, but they’re not hurting that much. And presumable they have more leeway to vote on these other issues than maybe some of the noncollege white women, who are feeling squeezed.
Sargent: They’re doing pretty damn well, let’s face it.
Brownstein: They are doing really damn well. And the noncollege white women are pro-choice too, but the history, and any pollster you talk to, will tell you they don’t vote on it as much as the college white women. Someone said to me a couple of weeks ago, The college white women don’t need anything. They don’t need any message. Getting rid of Trump is like ... they’re self-generating. I agree with that to a point. I think that having Cheney out there explicitly saying to the Republican-leaning women in this cohort that it’s OK, you can do this, plus nobody has to know, which is an interesting message.
Sargent: Yes. Crucial. Absolutely crucial message.
Brownstein: I think [that’s] all that really matters. I could turn around and ask you the question. If we think about the major demographic blocs in the electorate—Black men, Black women, Hispanic men, Hispanic women, college white men, college white women, noncollege white men, noncollege white women—where is Harris going to do better than Biden? There aren’t that many of those groups that you would look at today and say, She is going to improve on Biden. Now she doesn’t have to, in the sense that he won by seven million votes and he won these three states by 260, but you’d like to do better somewhere to offset the likelihood that you’re going to do a little worse with some of the men.
Sargent: Well, Ron, couldn’t one argue that, on this score, she benefits from the fact that Trump is even crazier, as you mentioned earlier?
Brownstein: Yes, but it’s got to translate it to something. You start with a 160,000 vote cushion roughly in Michigan, 80,000 in Pennsylvania, and 20,000 in Wisconsin. Then you start subtracting from that if you lose a little margin in the midsize cities, and you lose a little margin in the rural places, and whether you can increase turnout enough to offset any inroads for Trump among Black men. Every time I do this from every angle, it says to me, The four suburban county outside of Philly, Biden won them by 290,000 votes, maybe she has to win them by 305; Dane County, maybe she has to push up the margin by 10; and maybe in the WOW counties, cut his margin by another 10; Oakland County, he won by about 106, I think it was, can she get it to 115 or 120? That seems to me [the key] like if you can put together enough in the big metro centers and their inner suburbs. In most states, there are not enough people elsewhere. Texas and North Carolina, there are enough people elsewhere. I’m not sure in Michigan and Wisconsin, there are enough people elsewhere. Pennsylvania is a really close call, which is why everybody on the democratic side is biting their fingernails.
Sargent: What’s your bottom line, Ron? Can she get there? What has to happen at this point in these last two weeks?
Brownstein: I’m persuaded by Mike Podhorzer’s analysis. Mike Podhorzer, the former political director of the AFL-CIO, who I also think you’ve had on the show, is now a behind-the-scenes guru, train switching for democratic messaging and public opinion analysis. And he points out—I think I was the first person to write about this a couple of years ago—using data from Catalist, which is this very well-respected Democratic targeting firm, that there are 91 million separate individuals who have come out to vote against Trump or Trumpism in the last four elections, which is considerably more than the 83 million individual people who have come out to vote for him or Republican candidates. Mike thinks that, and he said this for a year and when Biden was the nominee, the critical question in the election is what are we discussing in the final days. Are we discussing, Are you better off than you were four years ago?, which I think is a hard race for Harris to win. Or are we discussing the unique threats that Trump is explicitly posing? The increasingly vitriolic, racist, xenophobic, authoritarian, and just plain vulgar language—if that is front and center, Mike believes Democrats have a better chance of turning out the voters, the least engaged voters at the penumbra or the edge of that coalition, which both he and Simon Rosenberg have called the anti-MAGA majority.
The canary in the coal mine and all of this is the rise in Trump’s retrospective job approval. In both national and swing state polls, he now often polls at a higher retrospective job approval than he ever achieved while he was president and he’s at 50 or above in a number of national and swing state polls and retrospective job approval.
Sargent: That should never have been allowed to happen.
Brownstein: Basically that says that voters are looking at him primarily through the lens of what they don’t like about Biden: mostly inflation, maybe a little bit the border. Everything else that goes along with electing Trump, and all the things that caused his approval rating to never reach 50 percent when he was actually in office, has somewhat faded for the electorate. They chose not to really engage on that in early October. And look, they have to do a lot of things. I’m not trying to be sitting here in the bleachers throwing my beer at the right fielder.
Sargent: Tell us, just to wrap this up, how does she get there on those three states? What’s the best case and what’s the worst case?
Brownstein: The best case for Harris is that she increases turnout enough in the inner cities to offset any decline in margin. She holds down her losses in smaller places, Trump country, by improving at least somewhat among noncollege white women. And then she blows the doors off in the big populous white collar, racially diverse, pro-choice, pro-diversity inner suburbs.
Sargent: Plausible?
Brownstein: Totally. Not guaranteed, but totally plausible. We saw it in 2020, we saw it in 2022, we saw a version of it even in 2018. Unlike the Senate ... in the Senate, Democrats can only win the Senate if they do things that they don’t usually do: win in Montana or Ohio or Texas. Winning Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin is not some great reach for Democrats. In fact, they have usually won those states since 2016. The counter mobilization to Trump in all three of those states has been greater than his mobilization. It is tilted slightly more democratic. Now, that was before four years of inflation and all the factors we’re dealing with now, but the idea of assembling a metro inner suburb majority in those states is not some science fiction assignment. It is just replicating what they have been able to do in most elections since Trump knocked them out of the blue wall in 2016.
Sargent: And it sure looks like that’s what they’re really, really determined to do this time. Ron Brownstein, thanks so much for coming on.
Brownstein: Great to be here. And here we go. Two weeks.
Sargent: You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.