I'm not going to lie. It's scary, man. Because, because here's the problem. I'll say this when my dog scares away a delivery person downstairs. You may be over here.

I don't know. You should tip your delivery man well at Christmas. I don't know how you do. That dog is so scary. I feel bad when anyway.

So, okay, there's two things here. One, you can't deny that folks think Biden is too old to do for more years. And it's unfair. I don't know if it's unfair to Biden, but it's unfair by comparison, right? Because as we've pointed out, Biden and Trump were in high school at the same age. The difference is Trump clearly very carefully stage manages every single public appearance down to starting every day in the makeup chair. They go out of their way. One thing they do very well is they present him as very youthful when he is not, right? That's what they do with Trump. And so Biden is not doing well by comparison in terms of the perception. But it's still perception is reality. And if we're being honest, when we think about being in our 80s and being president of the United States, it does seem like a tall task, all right? And we have to be honest for ourselves about that. The reason I'm conflicted in addition to the fact that at the end of the day, Joe Biden is the only one who gets a vote in this. And so what we say may not matter. But the reason I'm conflicted if it were up to me is my question here is, is this the way politics work now? Is that if you're president for four years, or if you're the nominee for whatever amount of time, the way the right wing machine works is you are going to get hammered every single day by the machine to where your poll numbers may just automatically look like this at some point. And it may not be the case that even if we didn't have to go through like a messy primary or anything like that, let's say you could just swap Biden out and put in another candidate, the candidate of your choosing that you might think would be the best one by election day. Are they going to be in the same place from a polling perspective? And if so, are you then confronted with the problem of if you were going to have the same approval number, regardless, you would rather have the accomplishments that Biden has to go with the bad approval number. That's the unanswered question for me. Yeah.

And I where I come down on this, and I've described this a little bit before is we kind of ran this experiment now because Biden had that opportunity and kind of in one, the last election, it started off with really high approval ratings. So something about the freshness to it, even though Biden was not a young man and he was somebody who is, you know, very much present in American life, he still was in a more commanding position heading into that election. Now he also had the benefit of Trump being in power. And I think people were sick of Trump and and Trump's like Trump can present all the youthful yada yada he wants when he's not in office. But when he's in office, people are confronted with him in a certain kind of way. You know, my former boss, David Axelrod, friend of the party has been on the pod before, you know, weighted into this. He said it's very late to change horses. A lot will happen in the next year that no one can predict. And Biden's team says it's his resolve to run. If he continues to run, he will be the nominee of the Democratic Party. What he needs to decide is whether that is wise, whether it's in his best interest or the countries. So getting spicy out there, acts and here's him going on CNN talking about this.

David Axelrod joins us now. David, appreciate your time. You know when you're typing out these two tweets what the response is going to be. And there's, I guess I would sort of, what's the intent here? What do you want him to decide is in his best interest in the countries?

Look, only he can decide that Phil. And I'm not reacting to one particular poll, but a whole body of research and conversations with people. And my concerns, I want to make clear, I think Biden's been a great president. I think he's done things that have generational, will have generational impact and importance. I think he's been honorable in the office. You know, I have nothing but good things to say. But as I've said for like a couple of years now, the issue is not, for him is not political, it's actuarial. And you can see that in this poll. I mean, there's just a lot of concern about the age issue. And that is something that I think he needs to ponder. Let's do a check and say, is this the right thing to do? I believe if he does run, he will be the nominee. And I'm not encouraging people to challenge him. I think the party should fall in behind him if he's the nominee of the Democratic Party. Because at the end of the day, this is a, not a normal race. This is a race about democracy and the state of our democracy and the survival of our democracy. And that's the threat on the other side here. And I know how deeply the president feels about that. So he just has to ask himself, is this the best path? I suspect that he will say yes. But time is fleeting here. And this is probably the last moment for him to do that check. And it's probably good if he does.

What a diplomatic wave saying. Clearly, acts doesn't think he should run. You and I both know, actually, well, yeah, you

and I both know, actually enough to know that that's that's that's David Axelrod being like Biden shouldn't run. I mean, and

this is not a small, like look, like people could say whatever they want about X, but the men knows a lot about messaging. And he's picking up on the fact that, you know, we talked about this when it came out, the AP poll that showed 77% of Americans, including 69% of Democrats, if you'd Biden is too old to be effective for four more years. And we can't control yet the perception of Trump. And actually, in many ways, if the if the voters hold Trump accountable to that, that still doesn't answer the question of whether Biden is the right guy, because you want to put forth the most salient, compelling candidate you could have. And the hardest part about this, and you pointed this out, is we just don't know what the alternative would look like if you ran a primary right now. So it's it's an unanswerable question. So it's just a matter of like judgment and probabilities here.

So okay. Actually, just before we went in the air, I got an email from a listener of the show, which we used to read those all the time, but I'm bringing that back for a minute. And she makes she has two big questions here. And I want us to take them one at a time. Her name is Jen and she's from Keene, New Hampshire. And Jen asked, asked this, which nobody's really tackled, which is, is there any evidence that Biden has prepared to run against anyone other than Trump? In my mind, the case for democracy and his candidacy in particular needs to be about the threat the whole GOP poses, regardless of who the front runner is. But also, is he preparing for the possibility that Trump implodes, or is taken down by his 91 felony counts? And all of a sudden Biden is running against Nikki Haley or even worse Ron DeSantis. I will throw in the other possibility is Trump is also very old. So there's another scenario in which it's not Trump, right? She says, it's a small possibility, but I would think that a campaign strategy that shows his strengths up against any GOP nominee would be stronger than one that simply falls back on Trump's a terrible person vote for me instead. It is a good point in that we've all been thinking about this as can Trump, can Biden beat Trump? What happens if it's suddenly not Trump for some reason? If it's a Republican who doesn't have as much baggage with the country, does Biden win?

Well, obviously it's an unanswerable question at the moment. Right now, I can only say what the polling says, which is that Haley is the biggest problem for Biden in the polling right now. And DeSantis is probably his best opponent and probably people like Vivek and people like that would be also like if I'm choosing. If I'm Biden, I'm probably hoping for that. And actually, Haley, honestly, if we're looking at the race right now, Haley is probably, I don't think there's any chance for any of these people unless Trump gets arrested, but Haley is the only one you could squint and make an argument for. But I think like I'll reiterate what I've said before, which is I'm with acts. I have a lot of positive things to say about Biden as president, but you know, father time is undefeated. It comes for all of us. And the question is, is this, you know, LeBron James is an amazing basketball player. At some point he won't be Michael Jordan, you know, on the Wizards was not Michael Jordan on the Bulls. And at a certain point, it's going to come. And I think it's, it's an unanswerable question as to where when Biden crosses that line. I mean, it may be answerable at some point, but Lord, help us like look that we never get there, right? While he's in office, especially. But I think it's just a matter of judgment. And my judgment is I look at the, I look at Biden and I can say like you could sell high, sell high on you've now, you know, expanded democratic majorities and key areas and had a, you know, amazing economic run. The Fed put out a report with incredible economic numbers, et cetera. And everybody retires at a certain point and a lot of really successful leaders retire on top. And he could make way for Gretchen Whitmer Shapiro, you know, people, you know, Bishir, like these types of folks who Westmore like this incredible bench of candidates who if I'm a betting man, I bet on those people like the, like the, the, you know, the Moses to the Joshua generation that Obama talked about, right, pass the baton and build on the success of the Biden administration. And that's how I want to frame it. I don't want to make it about like, Hey, Biden, we're ungrateful for what you've done because I'm incredibly grateful for what he did and what he's done is put with what he did to win the last election and what he's done as president. But at the same time, I would love to see a passing of the baton. But if it is him, like I will, I will hoist a corpse through that finish line if I have to. And like, like, like, if it comes to it, I'll be

there, you know, well, interestingly, this is the inverse of what we were talking about earlier with governors being able to depart from the partisan streaks of their states, right? Because people, when people look at a governor, they say, this person has to really do something. So I'm going to put aside Democrat and Republican. So here we are in a situation where when we look at the issues nationally, abortion, guns, the extremism with regard to democracy, those are tipping, at least in the swing states in particular toward the Democratic Party. But then when you introduce not, not incompetence or, you know, being too old or anything like that as it currently is, but people worrying about somebody being able to keep it together over four years and going into their eighties, then you start to have the competence thing. Unfairly, mind you, begin to work against you with voters, which is one, which is the very thing that probably put him over the top to win the last election is that people were looking for competence. They were looking for steady. And that's the thing about being a president or a governor or a mayor. People are thinking about your ability to get up every day and do the job, not just do the job in a way that they agree with, right? Not just have the same position as them on issues. So it also brings you to the question that I brought up earlier, which is what if the way that the attack machine works now is that all the negative stuff that has been thrown at Biden, if you have, if you, you know, pull him out, you can't do this, you're going to have a primary, but whatever it is, whoever steps in, if it ends up being Kamala Harris suits the nominee, or if it's Jared Polis or whoever, that by the time we get to election day, their numbers look exactly the same, but they can't point to all the accomplishments. It's a really, really difficult choice for Biden to make in that way. Yeah.

I mean, I'll be, I'll be polis. I know you're, you're threatening me here with a really good time here. I'm not going to take that. I know you're a big polis. But putting aside polis, I'm going to get a polis poster over here. I'm going to be the only human being on this planet with one, but the, but okay, clearing that to track you for a second. But here's my dream scenario. I would love for the Democrats to be able to run on like, what are most elections about change versus more the same now every once in a while, somebody does both like take back, take back control from Brexit or make America great again was a change and more the same. It was like change from this sort of Washington way of doing things and, you know, neoliberalism, yada, yada, yada. And it was more the same in the sense like it was an nostalgia election. Right. Now, what, what we could do is say, look, like the voters are clamoring for difference. One party is delivering the same old hat in Trump. All right. But we have listened to you, the voters. And what we're saying is like, even though we got this amazing economic record and we've got a lot that we're going to run on and those policies will continue. We hear you. You want new energy. Think of this Trump versus Biden dichotomy. And this is your way out of it. Your way out of it. Scratch and Whitmer. It's Shapiro, right? It's what's more, right? It's a new face, somebody with new energy and somebody who can, you know, like if there's going to be a, like every once in a while, Obama did this and Trump unfortunately did this too. Every once in a while when a new face comes onto the scene, it dislodges certain things within our politics. It allows people to reconsider. So that 20% of people who crossed the aisle of sorts in, in Ohio to vote for the abortion measure or the people who voted for this year, right? Or in actually states that are going to probably matter more, not to say anything about those states, but like this gives us an opportunity to revisit their assumptions and say, all right, that five to 10% of people who really, really hate Trump within the Republican party, but also hate Biden, but also, you know, look at their net worth and how it's increased and how there's been economic stability in the face of major, major obstacles over the past few years. And they look at Biden and say, all right, like, I don't like Biden, but I kind of want, I don't want to go back to the days of Trump and I have it out. And that out is Westmore or Gretchen M. Whitmer. I'm for that world.

Yes, that's the ideal scenario. Here's, I'm not arguing back. I really don't know what I think. Yeah. Yeah, because here's the other way it goes is like, you know, I'm like, you know, I'm like, I'm a huge Westmore fan. Like, I think we've had him on the show, right? I think we have. Yeah, we have. And I love Wes. But if you introduce Wes, what if it goes the other way? What if it's like the first few weeks, people are like, this guy's amazing. Wow. Rhodes, scholar, combat veteran, you know, incredible personal story, all that. But everybody has things they've been attacked for. And then the next thing that happens is that you start introducing those things. And because people don't have a long history with that candidate or with that person, one of the first things they get to hear is the other side defining them. The thing that a candidate like Biden has going for him is you can't, you are limited in your ability to define Biden if you're the Republicans, right? They're trying very hard to redefine him with the hunter stuff. They're obviously going to work really hard to redefine him with as acts. So euphemistically puts it actuarial arguments age. You have that, but anytime you introduce somebody new, it is a race to whether you're going to define you or they're going to define you. So like here's the crater

too. Here's the problem. I am to use that metaphor in this Trump Biden race. Unfortunately, we're starting off behind in the race, whereas I think in the, in the Westmore race, actually we're both racing to define Westmore at the exact same time. And I would rather take that world than a world in which we are largely having to convince people of perceptions they've already baked in with Biden, which is a lot harder. You know, it's like, it's like they say it's like it takes a lifetime to build a reputation and a second to lose it or something is the saying, right? I'm butchering it. It's just how it is. It's unfortunate, right? Like, you know, like I remember dealing with this in Nashville and I was running schools. I was like flying high at a certain point. And then I got in some fight with school board and then for like a year, people wouldn't look me in the eyes in town even though it's like, it's like, it's like, you just like these kinds of things just like happen. Like it's just, and it takes a long time to dig out of it. The unfortunate reality is this takes relatively low for me. I had, you know, a pretty stable situation. It was running my school. It didn't really matter. And it dug myself out of it and reclaimed my positioning. The problem here is we have a very limited amount of time. That's kind of the urgency that acts is talking about and with a diminishing resource, which is Biden's aged vigor, like inevitably, no matter what people say, which is why ageism is like a different debate than other isms in the sense that it comes for all of us. The statistics are what they are. And it's just a reality that we have to deal with. Like nobody would hoist a 110 year old into the presidency. So we all agree that there's a limit somewhere. This is, this would be the, we know, we would be the, the, you know, breaking records here. And we just need to take that seriously. And it's not the only reason why Biden might consider not running. There are many reasons why he might consider not running. But I think that's one of them. And that's what the voters are screaming at us to consider.

And look, here's the best argument I can make for that, for that point, which is that right now, probably the biggest liability that the Biden campaign has is this is age and people questioning whether he can continue to do it combined with a secondary to that is just being on the scene for so many years that Americans, we don't have the longest attention span, right? If you can pull off introducing a new, obviously younger candidate and new to the scene in a way where they don't take on too much water, well, then you've completely flipped that scenario. And then what you have is somebody running against Trump, who is going to be very youthful by comparison and who is not going to, people are not going to be tired of, right? There's something to that. So the last point that I think would be the strongest point for this would be that that if you believe, and I think this is right, that all things being equal in this next election between abortion, guns, extremism, the continuance of democracy, I think that the issues break not overwhelmingly, but slightly toward the Democrats. If you can develop a scenario where your candidate has the regular liabilities of a regular Democrat being hit as too liberal, being hit, you know, all those kinds of things with a minimal amount of the liabilities, I'm kind of talking myself into this with a minimal amount of the liabilities that come with the personal to them, minimal or just mitigated within you're in a very advantageous position because now you're running on, you know, doing something about gun safety, doing something, you know, restoring rights when it comes to reproductive rights, fighting against extremism and preserving democracy, well then you're in a very good position. And it brings me to the second question that Jen from keen New Hampshire asked. She said, secondly, I've been thinking a lot about how Reagan won over many Democrats in 1980 and 1984, and then went about the work of converting them to Republicans, or at least keeping them as voters for the GOP. Biden got many Republicans and GOP leaning independence voting firm in 2020, which made the difference. I don't see much evidence that he's been doing the work to keep them the way Reagan did. What are you seeing and what strategies do you think would work? That's the second level question, which is what what are the issues that allow us to expand the coalition, which is what this whole show is about, right? And I'll give you time to think about it. I've had time to think about my answer. And I think that the answer, there's the obvious one, which they're they are successfully pushing every day, which is extremism, keeping democracy in place, that kind of thing. But you alluded to this earlier, you said some of these issues, they can fade away from the scene. And we the only way for us to keep the threat of extremism and the threat of losing democracy at the forefront is to be talking about it every day. However, sadly, really, unfortunately, guns and abortion are not issues that fade away. For tragic reasons, guns, because we keep constantly having mass shootings in this country. That issue is not going away. And Americans are more and more questioning their, even if they believe themselves to be programmed, questioning that position. And then to abortion. Anytime you're talking about someone having a right or not having a right, that issue is not going to fade away. Because if people don't have their right that they should have today, they're not going to have it tomorrow either. And they're not going to lose their enthusiasm for trying to get that right back. My point is that, well, I will give an anecdote, just I'm sorry for the monologue, but, not I'll keep going. There's only two of us. So sometimes it happens. When, when, when I talk about these issues with people and it comes up a lot, like I, I live in a place and work in a place where I am surrounded by people who don't always have the same liberal views as me. And I usually bring up these two because what I will do is I will say to somebody who will talk about abortion, for instance, I will say, uh, okay, let me ask you this. And I will do just what that ad we played earlier does. I will start talking about issues like in the case of rape, in the case of incest. And then I'll start just gradually walking through several issues. And then what I generally say is when they give me more often than not, very reasonable answers about those things that I would agree with, I say, well, if you were to run for office and try and get the, the endorsement of a national right to life group with those positions, they would not only not endorse you, they would campaign against you and they would consider you to be pro choice. So perhaps you are pro choice, right? And then, and then I do the same thing on guns. I'll ask people, well, do you think that there should be a background check? Do you think people who have committed domestic violence, do you think that there, there should be a way in the law for them to not be able to get a gun when that is the leading cause of, uh, when, when, when women are murdered, uh, by their spouses, that's, that's the leading way. You know, and I go through these and over and over, they say, well, yeah. And then you're talking about red flag laws. And eventually you might find a place where they disagree. It's usually somewhere after assault weapons ban. And this includes with gun owners. And then you say, okay, well, you would get an F rating from the NRA if you were to run for office. So my point is these are arguments that I think can be made, um, by either Biden or another candidate to expand that coalition and try and turn the voters that have been won over in the last few years into Democrats and not just Republicans who in some cases vote for Democrats. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it's such an interesting question. And I really appreciate the question. It's, I think there are two ways to do it. And the Reagan way, I think was a combination of having a very clear forward looking vision. And I mean, obviously it wasn't an inclusive vision, but it was a forward looking vision, especially for suburbanites who dominated the eighties in many different ways. But also getting feisty when you need to in a way that challenges the traditional way people talk about things. Obviously, Trump is really good at that. Like the feistiness. We just don't see that a lot with Democrats is like, you know, picking the right kind of fight. Obviously it's what made Bernie so popular, almost a certain segment. So that's one way to do it, right? That kind of combination. Um, I think the second is the Obama way to do it, which is a little bit of the Reagan I like visionary and all that. But I think, you know, I forget who said this, but, um, you know, the most effective way to persuade people is to listen to them. Right. You don't need to agree with them. And this is what made you among many other things, uh, a strong politician is that you're a good listener. And I think like a politician who shows that they're listening, even if they don't come out the other side, completely agreeing with you. I mean, Bill Clinton was a master at this. That's a great politician. Now it's so hard to do as president, and especially it's so hard to do when people have baked in their impression of you, but whatever ways you could say that you show that you're listening. And you know, Obama was a descendant politically, especially before he became president because in part because his speeches were a little longer and a little bit more like

almost like entertaining people. People wanted to watch them. They were like songs. Yeah. Yeah.

And also he's like he had a charity of spirit where like, you know, he'd talk about, you know, that's famous race speech in Philadelphia, for example, where he'd be like, look, like, you know, I'm not going to disown Reverend Wright because I'm not going to disown my grandmother, my white grandmother who, you know, would do things that, you know, like I look back on and I went about it. Like, you know, walking on the other side of the street when somebody would look like me would be walking on the other side, you know, on the other side of the street. And like, there was this sort of dialogue he was having to be like, look, like, I want to make you the hero of this story. Right. And I think this is where Democrats have walked away from. I've been thinking about this a lot since, you know, it was the 15th anniversary of our victory with Obama this past weekend. I think we've kind of gotten away from and in many ways, this is like reminds me of the Israel conversation. There's a lot of the same forces within the party who I think have taken some of the positions that you and I disagree with on Israel are also the kind of people who've created an uninviting environment, a black and white environment for people who enter the party. Whereas I have always been through arena from Obama, everything I believe in politics is that you leave the door open. You allow people to be imperfect. You allow them to come to that door and be the hero of the story, even if they may have been the villain before. And the heroes and villains, it's not always clear. Right. This is a country that's 50 50 60 40 55 45 and it can't be true that 45% of the public or 46 to use the 54 majority 54. And it's can't be that they're just inherently bad people. I refuse to admit that. But there has been a segment of our party that has kind of dragged us into messaging that implies that. We can't bring those people along if we're if we're treating them as evil people. And that has to be central to our messaging Biden and beyond. And every single one of the people we mentioned, whether it's Westmore, Shapiro, Sheer, Whitmer are really good at that. Like they're really good at keeping that door open. And Biden, when he said his best for sure, I don't want to I don't want to shortchange him.