podcast
The Axe Files with David Axelrod
David Axelrod, the founder and director of the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, and CNN bring you The Axe Files, a series of revealing interviews with key figures in the political world. Go beyond the soundbites and get to know some of the most interesting players in politics.
The Axe Files presents Hell & High Water with John Heilemann
The Axe Files with David Axelrod
Sep 1, 2022
This week The Axe Files team is sharing an episode of Hell & High Water with John Heilemann. This episode features a conversation with David Axelrod and was recorded in New York City in December 2021. Together they took a look back at the year in politics, from the Biden administration’s successes and mishaps, Covid-19, the polarization and paralysis in Washington, and Donald Trump’s continued stranglehold on the Republican Party. Axelrod reminisces about his storied career as a political reporter, Democratic strategist, and architect of Barack Obama's rise to the White House. Looking ahead to 2022, Axelrod lays out what he sees as the greatest challenges ahead for Democrats — and American democracy.
Episode Transcript
David Axelrod
00:00:07
Hey, Axe Files listeners. This week we're sharing a conversation I had with my pal John Heilemann back in December for his podcast Hell or High Water. Every week, John talks to seminal figures in politics, entertainment, business, tech, the media and beyond about the chaos we've lived through during the last few years, the conversations are deep, rich, bracingly real, but also hopeful. I was honored to talk about my time as a political reporter, a Democratic strategist, a White House aide, as well as to reflect on what's ahead for the Democratic Party and the country. I hope you'll enjoy the episode as much as I loved recording it. Be sure to check out other episodes of Hell or High Water wherever you get your podcasts.
John Heilemann
00:01:07
Hey, everyone, John Heilemann here and welcome to Hell & High Water, my podcast for The Recount about politics and culture on the edge of Armageddon with big ups to my pal Reza, the presiding genius and the sound of Wu-Tang Clan and the producer of our dope theme music. It's that time of year again, people, meaning the end of the year where we here at Hell & High water start feeling a little, not exactly sentimental or nostalgic, God knows, or reflective. God help us. But you know, just the little retrospective, which is to say that we're in the mood to gaze back upon these past 12 months, to review and assess and analyze, extrapolate and explicate the highs and the lows, the big stories, the sweeping trends, and the most unsettling, unnerving and occasionally uplifting events, developments, dust ups and disasters of this past year. And boy, there have been a bunch of those all across the news landscape from 2021 anno Domini. For all of you people who are either foolish or are lucky enough not to have to take four years of Latin in high school, that means "the year of our Lord." 2021, in the year of our Lord. Although when it comes to this past year, the Lord, if such a creature even exists, doesn't seem to have been around very much. Anyway, we are starting down this retrospective path which will carry us through the next few episodes of the podcast a the topic that is nearest and dearest to both my and The Recount's heart and that would be politics. And to help us make sense of the past year in politics, we have with us this week an old and dear friend, someone I sat down with recently when he happened to be in New York City. Well, not exactly happened to be. This guy had come to New York precisely so the two of us could go to see the Knicks take on his beloved Chicago Bulls at Madison Square Garden, a game that did not go exactly as I had hoped, but that put him in a mighty good mood. He's like cackling and chortling and taunting me, all the while still wearing that hangdog expression that is one of his characteristic trademarks, along, of course, with his unmatched knowledge of and experience in national politics, a track record that most famously includes back in simpler times, helping to elect and then reelect our nation's first Black president. And so, without further ado, you already know who this person is. The master of disaster, the sultan of SWAT, the say-hey kid of American politics, the truth, the light, the answer, the question, the one and only David Axelrod.
David Axelrod
00:03:24
The state of our politics in the last year has been rancid because we can't get free of this goddamn virus.
John Heilemann
00:03:35
This is David Axelrod's second appearance on Hell & High Water. The first came back in late October of last year, just a couple of weeks before Election Day, when David appeared with his fellow members of the Obama braintrust, Alyssa Mastromonaco and David Plouffe. This time, however, we have Axe solo, allowing us plenty of time to discuss pretty much everything of consequence this past year in politics, from the implications of COVID to the Biden presidency, the American economy, and Washington's overarching, never-worse polarization partizanship and dysfunction. Everything that is, except for all the news related to Joe Biden's Build Back Better bill, which since we recorded this, got punted into 2022 when it was supposed to be done by the end of 2021. And then since we recorded this, received what could turn out to be a mortal blow from Joe Manchin. So the coverage of Build Back Better, a little bit overtaken by events here in the podcast, but that's sort of made up for by the rest of the sterling conversation with David. We got to talk about all that political stuff, but also we had time to talk about David's long and fascinating career, first in journalism, then as a Democratic strategist with a specialty in helping Black politicians navigate the tricky crosscurrents of American racial politics. And now, as an analyst for CNN, host of the excellent podcast, The Axe Files, and co-host of another second excellent podcast despite the presence and nature of his co-host, the ever surly and short tempered curmudgeon Mike Murphy, that podcast's called Hacks on Tap. At the end of our talk, despite its retrospective focus, Axe and I turn towards the future. Got to talk about his assessment of how steep the hill is the Democrats are facing in next year's midterm elections, the biggest challenges facing the Biden administration and of course, Donald Trump and his party's repeated and relentless attempts to subvert American democracy and the resulting stakes for all of us in 2022 and 2024. Yes, indeed, it is a lot. And you are going to want to hear every word of wisdom from David Axelrod, a man who has spent his entire career dedicated in one way or another to keeping our country and himself, his family, and back in the old days, his beloved clients, including one Barack Obama, from getting singed or scorched or swamped or drowned by the forces of Hell & High Water.
Joe Biden
00:05:52
We face an attack on a democracy and on truth, a raging virus, growing inequity. The sting of systemic racism. A climate in crisis. America's role in the world. Any one of these will be enough to challenge us in profound ways. But the fact is, we face them all at once, presenting this nation with one of the gravest responsibilities we've had. Now we're going to be tested. Are we going to step up? All of us? It's time for boldness, for there is so much to do.
John Heilemann
00:06:31
David Axelrod, it's great to see you here.
David Axelrod
00:06:33
Good to see you.
David Axelrod
00:06:35
It's time for baldness. I feel really comfortable.
John Heilemann
00:06:39
That's right. It's time for baldness. It's our time. Exactly right. So we want to talk about the year in politics. And I figured I'd start with that because it's amazing. It's a year ago almost that Biden was inaugurated. And I just I don't mean to be too literalist, but he rattled, I always think it's a little dangerous to rattle off, "here are the five or six big crises of our time. And if we don't solve them, you know, we're fucked." But he did. He named them all. And I ask you how you think he did on them. But most generally, like, have we met this moment? Has Biden met this moment? Has he been bold? Have we been bold?
David Axelrod
00:07:09
In some ways, yes. In some ways, no. But the other question and I'll get back to yours is, is that what most Americans were thinking about? I mean, obviously, the democracy issue was, you're behind a fence and an armed guard on the Capitol because we just had an insurrection. So he had to address that.
John Heilemann
00:07:30
Yeah.
David Axelrod
00:07:30
The other challenges are undoubtedly existential challenges, really important and so on. But the question is always like, what are people feeling in their own lives? And I think that the test for him as it is for every president, but particularly in a time like this where things feel so loose and out of control, is do people feel better about what's going on in their lives and do they feel like you are connected to what's going on in their lives? And the danger of going big is that people don't live there, they live down here, and that has created potential problems for him.
John Heilemann
00:08:09
I think the answer to my question at least is that he has been bold, right. He's pursued.
David Axelrod
00:08:14
There's no doubt.
John Heilemann
00:08:14
Maybe I mean, you could argue he hasn't really done much even to try to address the questions of systemic racism or really of democracy and the truth, but the virus, the economy and maybe climate. He's got big swings, right?
David Axelrod
00:08:28
Yes.
John Heilemann
00:08:29
To his benefit or not?
David Axelrod
00:08:30
Well, the problem with taking big swings at big problems is the payoff is is not immediate. Right. I mean, the payoff on climate is not immediate. The payoff, I mean he just passed this historic infrastructure bill, long overdue. We would have killed for that during the Obama years. The country really needs it, but nobody's seen anything from it yet. And that's really the problem with our politics, is it's really hard to deal with long term problems in a short term politics that we live. So, you know, I think that he's taking big swings that will be redound to the benefit of the country, but people haven't felt it yet. And I think that there has been a, you know, whenever you deal with these big things instead of kind of deconstructing them to their elements, people tend not to identify with it.
John Heilemann
00:09:21
So he passed a massive COVID relief program in the spring. He passed the infrastructure bill. You know, these are multitrillion dollar, like way off the scale of precedent. Nothing that we've ever done in America.
David Axelrod
00:09:31
And that's something that everybody knows.
John Heilemann
00:09:33
Yes. We're not going to know whether Build Back Better is passed before the time that this airs. And maybe not this year, but even if like let's imagine it passes in some form, another multitrillion dollar thing, even if it's scaled down, right. If I'm channeling Ron Klain, I'm sitting here at this table, I say, man, those are three enormous things that we passed with threadbare majorities in the House and Senate. Abigail Spanberger, after the Virginia thing, said, "We didn't elect him to be FDR. People just wanted to get back to normal." And that's the problem. Overreach. In this inaugural, he's laying out the case for boldness. He's got laying down the tracks for, I'm going to be FDR. And now we're here. He would say, we passed these huge things. We will be rewarded for them down the line. Do you think that's a good bet or do you look at that and say, hey, maybe Spanberger's right?
David Axelrod
00:10:15
Yeah, well, I think that's certainly true. And I think that part of the honeymoon that Biden had, short as it was, was the fact that he did restore some sense of normalcy. He is a decent guy. He isn't, you know, pulling the wings off of flies every day. So that sense of constant kind of conflict was gone. But, you know, the way you posit all of this, I think, speaks to the problem and one that she's concerned about, which is all the discussion has been about this trillion dollar program and that trillion dollar program and FDR and transformation and so on. And really, I think people will respond better to pragmatic initiatives to deal with fundamental kinds of concerns that they have in their daily lives. Yeah, you know, a lot of people in this country are struggling with childcare and the cost of it and the ability to get it. So to say, you know, we're trying to do something about that. I think that resonates with people. You say, you know, every kid really should be able to go to a good preschool in this country. That resonates with people. All of that is subsumed in the larger discussion about this trillion dollar program and that trillion dollar program. And even the infrastructure bill, like everybody can point to a street or a road or a bridge or a, you know, in their area that absolutely needs to be fixed. But that's not what they're hearing necessarily in this. And so I do think that's in part endemic to big plans that you passed. And some of these were you know, the reason that there is a reconciliation bill is it's the only way around the filibuster. And so you and they've treated it because of the fear that the Republicans are coming next time. They've treated it like the last the last plane out of Kabul. And they want to get every priority they can on it. And that's created a lot of tension. But the focus is on the big things and not on the individual things that are actually going to improve people's lives. And we'll see if they can make the turn and that enough of those are evident in the next ten months or that, you know, it changes the psychology. But that's what they have to hope for.
John Heilemann
00:12:30
And of course, one of the things is true is that because of the narrow majorities and because the ideological divisions in the party, the impression to a lot of Americans is: Democrats in disarray. They can't get this shit done. Why not? And it just looks like more Washington squabble to a lot of people. But here's a tangible thing, right? COVID, right. The most, the most tangible thing. Why did Joe Biden get elected president? A lot of people were sick of Trump. A lot of people thought Covid was a fucking disaster.
David Axelrod
00:12:50
A hundred percent.
John Heilemann
00:12:51
They said, get Joe Biden. He's going to come here.
David Axelrod
00:12:53
He's competent.
John Heilemann
00:12:53
He's competent, he's going to fix the virus. Right. He's going to help us get past the pandemic. So they passed that big COVID bill. Things were looking great. And then we got to the summer. And over July 4th weekend, I want to play this. Here's Joe Biden. This I think is the worst, literally the worst thing Joe Biden said. People make fun of him for a million things.
David Axelrod
00:13:08
We talked about this the other day on another highly rated podcast.
John Heilemann
00:13:09
Yes, that podcast Hacks on Tap for all those— if you don't listen to it, you're a fool.
David Axelrod
00:13:13
Yes.
John Heilemann
00:13:14
Although one of the co-hosts is completely incompetent. I'm not going to say which one.
David Axelrod
00:13:17
Don't insult our potential listeners. Let's watch the clip.
John Heilemann
00:13:19
Here's here's here's Joe Biden over Independence Day weekend, July 4th, talking about Covid.
Joe Biden
00:13:25
Today, all across this nation, we can say with confidence America is coming back together. 245 years ago, we declared our independence from a distant king. Today, we are closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus. That's not to say the battle against Covid-19 is over. We've got a lot more work to do.
John Heilemann
00:13:55
I'm only going to channel Ron Klain this second now, right here because I don't like, Ron's got about 100 IQ points on me, and so I feel like an idiot. But Ron would say, Hey, we played that fairly right? That's the full context. He didn't say the fight's over, he didn't say mission accomplished. He didn't say, We are declaring independence. But you know, David, you're a message communications guy. Would you have had the president go out and say, today we're closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus? Or is that a little too close to mission accomplished? Which, of course, as we know, came back to bite him when Delta came around like days later.
David Axelrod
00:14:21
Yeah. I mean, I don't know what they knew at the time that he spoke. They had always been planning on this. Right. So they've been pushing toward this thousand people on the White House lawn. This is symbolically our statement, and I think they were wedded to that. And I don't know whether they were advised, you know, you better ratchet that down a bit because we're concerned about where this thing is going next. I mean, there was a lot of positive talk. From the CDC and elsewhere about where we were at that time. But look, the biggest problem that he has politically, I think is—
John Heilemann
00:14:55
It leaves a giant hostage to fortune. And no matter what you say about what they were informed about, it's like, it just seems like why? Why do you need to go that far?
David Axelrod
00:15:01
Because I think they had a picture of an event. That would be sort of the seminal event where you declare your, that we're through this and and so much of about this is psychology and how the country feels about how things are going. And I think they wanted to create an environment which people felt better. And then.
John Heilemann
00:15:21
You started to say the biggest challenge is, his biggest political challenge is, and I cut you off.
David Axelrod
00:15:25
Is all of these ups and downs. You know, we're now in the fourth surge. I mean, I think Biden and his team did a very creditable job of getting the vaccine out. I don't think they anticipated the resistance and the weaponization of the vaccine to the degree that we saw it. Probably could have done more globally, which is a big problem. But I think they did a very creditable job and communications could have been better. But, you know, this this sense that, A, we thought we were done and now we're back and now we're going through it again with Omicron. And I got that right, didn't I?
John Heilemann
00:16:02
You did, you did! Very well done. Nicely done. Yeah.
David Axelrod
00:16:06
Thank you, I've been practicing. I was in the hallway for an hour before this practicing Omicron. So, you know, I think that that is just a wet blanket.
John Heilemann
00:16:15
But it, here's the thing that frustrates me about people and the way we talk about politics. It's like, you know look, presidents don't create good and bad economies. They move the needle a little bit, but they get, when the economy's good, they get all the credit, right, the economy's bad, they get hammered. That's just reality. So like people say, Joe Biden doesn't deserve all the criticism, but when Delta hit, that's when the opinion polls start to slide. We can, even more than Afghanistan. We can say in August is when the slide started. He's been on a downhill ever since. Is it fair? No, it's just part of the program if you're president. You can't really be like, this isn't fair. I've done a good job. Why are people mad at me because Covid's back? That's going to be how it's going to be if you said I'm here to end the pandemic.
David Axelrod
00:16:55
You know, we've built this image of the president as all powerful, all knowing. And when anything goes wrong, you know, the notion is, well, president should do something about it. Why isn't the president doing something about it like the people who are against, you know, the encroachment of government and, you know, massive, or they say executive power are the first ones to say, look, you know, we've got the Omicron and Biden hasn't done anything about it. So that is a hazard of the presidency. Every time something goes wrong, people expect the president to do something about it. And you can't exactly say, hey, you know what? There's some things that are beyond anyone's control. I mean, that is not a good line for a president. No one would write that into a speech.
John Heilemann
00:17:41
No. So, you know, there was Ron Johnson attacking Fauci a little while ago and saying, you know, we got the whole line of Republicans who attack Fauci and say he's a Nazi and this and there's all that scapegoating of Fauci. It raises a question. I have commented on this and gotten in some trouble with conservatives for saying this, that Republicans—
David Axelrod
00:18:03
He says with a little smile on his face.
John Heilemann
00:18:04
There's times when I think Republican death cult is overstated. Other times not. It does feel to me like there are Republicans who are rooting for Covid to come back because they think it's in their political benefit, because they know Biden will get punished and it'll be good for them.
David Axelrod
00:18:17
I think this is what frustrates people generally about politics, but it's taken a really grim turn here. The idea that everything gets weaponized in the battle for power. Right. Even a virus. And I mean, this is really something that should be beyond that. I mean, this should be a real national mission, but it isn't. And I think that, look, just to slightly shift but on the same point, the fact that 13 Republicans voted for an infrastructure bill for roads and bridges, for their communities and other communities, and get death threats and get call for censure from their own caucus is not because of the bill, but because they helped Biden. I mean, that's where our politics are right now. And I don't buy into the sort of what aboutism thing. I mean, Democrats can be opportunistic, too, no doubt about it. But it's gone to an extraordinary extreme on the right.
John Heilemann
00:19:16
And that takes us to my next topic, which is that man, Donald J. Trump, who I think if you were going to talk about what led to the politicization.
David Axelrod
00:19:24
He'll be disappointed by the way that he came up so late in the podcast.
John Heilemann
00:19:27
I know. Deep in the A-block. You know, when history, when histories are written, obviously his management of Covid was disastrous. But the legacy of that is this, he turned a pandemic, an issue of public health, where science should have governed and in any other era in our time really probably would have governed. We're not being, I think, rose colored in our glasses when we say in the past, America generally, like these were depoliticized things. Trump politicized it, turned into a culture war and it—
David Axelrod
00:19:52
Turned everything into a culture war.
John Heilemann
00:19:53
Right, and right well yes, and we're dealing with all of that right now, but really the worst of it to go back to the inaugural period. You know, we had the insurrection on January 6th. I want to play Trump, that 1/6 video. The thing he put out a little too late in the day just to remember what it was like on the day that the Capitol was almost sacked.
Donald Trump
00:20:10
There's never been a time like this where such a thing happened, where they could take it away from all of us. From me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election. But we can't play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You're very special.
John Heilemann
00:20:34
We love you. Yeah, you're very special.
David Axelrod
00:20:36
Yes.
John Heilemann
00:20:36
The guys who beat Capitol Hill police officers with the American flag. Right. Tased Officer Fanone. He loves them. Right. This is like one of the most appalling things anybody's ever seen, although Trump has done a lot of appalling things. But here's my question for you. As we look back on the year of 2021, are you surprised that Trump remains such a big figure in our politics and that in some way that not only did 1/6 and all of that horror that people witnessed that day, it didn't diminish his power at all, I don't think. And does that stun you? And how can that be?
David Axelrod
00:21:10
Well, does it stun me? No. I mean, you know, I've long since stopped the, "Well, this certainly is going to kill Trump" speculation. I mean, we've done that so many times.
John Heilemann
00:21:24
But he stopped being president like, the presidency ended and there was an insurrection that he fomented. Right. That's a little bit of an unusual case.
David Axelrod
00:21:32
Well, let's take that apart. First of all, not being president has its advantages, right? Because now everything is being seen through the prism of Joe Biden. And, you know, they've been sort of demonizing Biden in the way that they demonize Biden, you know, incompetent tool of the left kind of stuff. And you see a lot of take up among Republicans about that. And so, you know, that kind of cloud over Trump lifts a little the attention shifts to Biden. You know, that's something that can unify Republicans. And then, you know, Trump has, as propagandists do, as demagogues do. He's sold relentlessly this story with the help of his amen corner and right wing media, Fox and Breitbart.
John Heilemann
00:22:20
It's a big, loud corner.
David Axelrod
00:22:22
Right, you know. The big lie, I mean, the big lie that the election was stolen to the point where it's now an overwhelming kind of accepted thing among Republicans, 72% in the last poll I saw.
John Heilemann
00:22:33
And can I just pause on that for a second just because I think, like, you know, as political insiders, we're all like, yeah, the big lie. Amazing. I mean, we all are amazed by it, astonished by or appalled by it. Right. But for like normal people, I still I, I think about this as much as anybody as you do. Right. How can it be? I mean, I thought it was crazy back in the days when your boss, when we saw these numbers, it would be like a third of Republicans think he's not a legitimate president. He was born in Kenya. Another thing that Donald Trump propagated, obviously, very effectively. But the notion that the election was stolen, that that this big lie has taken root in this way, in this deep way, pushed by a former president, a man who's been take it off, Twitter, taken off Facebook, has no platform, hangs out in Mar-a-Lago all day long. And yet more Republicans almost on a daily basis accept this lie for which there is no basis. How can that be?
David Axelrod
00:23:20
Well, part of it also is that you have Republican politicians and officeholders who, fearful for their own power, are amplifying it, knowing that it's not true. And so when all of your sources of information, what you see on Facebook, what you see on the TV networks that you choose, what you hear from your elected officials when all of that points in one direction, given the tribalization of our politics, you can see how it happens. And there are examples in the history of how things like this happened. You know, I never bought this notion. My podcast partner, Mike Murphy, has been of the mind that Trump will fade over time. I've never been of the mind that Trump would relinquish his leadership of the Republican Party, and if he runs, he will be the odds on favorite to be the nominee for the party. And depending on the nominee and the state of the Democratic Party, he very well could enter 2024 as the favorite.
John Heilemann
00:24:20
We'll get to that a little bit later in the show, but—
David Axelrod
00:24:22
I'm trying to move you along.
John Heilemann
00:24:23
Oh, I know you are. You're doing very well. Thank you, thank you for doing that. I do want to just stick on this, last Trump question about this, which is I think you and I agree about this. And we said for four years, you would say Trump is not the cause of what's going on. He's an accelerant. He's a coagulant.
David Axelrod
00:24:38
And an opportunist who has capitalized on a sense of loss, besiegement, resentment.
John Heilemann
00:24:43
And white grievance and race, and then racism, cultural—
David Axelrod
00:24:46
It's a mix of things.
John Heilemann
00:24:47
All of those things. Right. So he capitalized on it. He opportunistically exploited it, he accelerated it, all of that. But if you believe that that's all true, that Trump's not the root cause of the problem, you would have thought that because you're playing to the real problem here is that the Trumpification of the party. Right, that he has this power over people still. And if you kind of buy the first thesis, you would have thought that like what power does he still have over these people? Like, what's that grounded in? How can it be, this is the thing that befuddles me? It's not just that he doesn't have any offices. Like they still act like they're afraid of him, even though, again, he's not president, he holds no office, he has no platform, and yet they're all still terrified. Why? Given our previous theory about Trump, you know, capitalizer, exploiter, coagulant accelerant, why is the party still following Donald Trump to the degree that they are tonally, as we see here, and practically in not repudiating a big lie that they all know is false?
David Axelrod
00:25:45
Yeah. I'm not sure coagulant is, but anyway.
John Heilemann
00:25:48
I like that word though. I like saying it.
David Axelrod
00:25:50
It is a great word.
John Heilemann
00:25:50
I enjoy saying it.
David Axelrod
00:25:51
It is a great word. Even if it doesn't apply.
John Heilemann
00:25:52
He concentrates, he concentrates it though, right? He pulls it all together, concentrates the base, and then lights it on fire.
David Axelrod
00:25:58
Well I mean they share the people who spoke and Trump share the same approach, which is to create enemies, demons, who set up a construct of cultural war and resentment. And it's been successful.
John Heilemann
00:26:14
Yes. Before we go to break, I want to ask I asked you before the show, you refused to give us the one thing I asked for, I asked for just one thing, the three most important political developments of the year. We may have covered some of them already. What are your three?
David Axelrod
00:26:26
Well certainly January 6th was one. I mean, unprecedented in our lifetime. And the fact that it has become accepted by so many Republicans is really concerning. I would say August 15th, which was the day that Afghanistan fell, but not just because of Afghanistan, but it's the day, it was right that in that moment when you saw the lines crossed in Biden's polling numbers and I think it was a combination of Afghanistan and the accumulated unhappiness about the Delta variant and the, you know, the retrenchment relative to the virus. And then the last one, I would say, is November 3rd, because it wasn't just Terry McAuliffe making a mistake. It wasn't. And I think Democrats need to take seriously what they saw on November 3rd. And Democrats are not you know, you talk about Trump exploiting all these things, but Democrats have been unwitting accomplices at times. And the general tone of Democrats is too often one that abets the narrative that Trump wants to deliver of judgmental elites looking down their noses and so on, and who are consumed by issues that are not the issues that touch on people's lives. I think Democrats need to to look hard at how they approach voters.
John Heilemann
00:27:45
I want to put one more issue on the table before we move to a little. David Axelrod, biographical walk down memory lane.
David Axelrod
00:27:52
Oh my favorite. It's such a long lane. I'm not sure I can remember.
John Heilemann
00:27:53
I know. Well, we could be here all day. Let's, let me ask this question, because as we sit here, two white dudes. It's not that long ago that the US Supreme Court heard this a case on abortion that I think your wife, my wife, many women we know, are already looking back, even though we don't know what the outcome of it is. But on the basis of the tenor of the conversation, they would cite that what they think now is the dawning realization that Roe is dead. Roe v Wade is dead, as historically significant, and would probably lobby to put it on the list of most important political developments of 2021. Do you think that potentially, if that's where we end up with Roe mostly or fully repealed, that it could be a thing that will be on the list of the most important things that happened in 2021.
David Axelrod
00:28:36
I mean, a lot of people are asking that question right now. And I honestly, I don't, I mean, it's going to be historically important for sure. Yeah, I think it's going to further balkanize our country, whether it becomes the sort of electoral issue I think is very open question We've never really seen choice on abortion rights be the motivating issue that, you know, will it bring women out, as Trump did in 2018 in the numbers that it did? We haven't seen that before, but we also haven't seen—
John Heilemann
00:29:08
Well, for 50 years we thought it was settled law.
David Axelrod
00:29:09
Right, we haven't seen Roe dismantled before. And I see Roberts, Chief Justice Roberts scrambling to try and find an elegant way out here. But I think we're going to see how motivational that issue is. And I don't think as it as we sit here today, anybody really knows the answer. But if you were to guess, you would say the election's still going to be about how people view the president, how people view the economy, how people view the direction of the country and tribalism.
John Heilemann
00:29:41
We're going to take a quick break and then we're going to come back and talk about the life and times of David Axelrod before we turn a little bit to the future in 2022 here on Hell & High Water. And we're back with David Axelrod on Hell & High Water. Finding old video is one of the things I love to do. And, you know, we weren't able to get anything from your childhood. I don't think there were any videos taken of you as a child.
David Axelrod
00:30:12
No. There are artist's conception.
John Heilemann
00:30:15
We should ask for those, you guys should've bring them in. And we couldn't find anything from the Tribune newsroom when you were at City Hall, not that. But we could find you as a young, relatively young political consultant, 1994 here on C-SPAN. Let's play that.
David Axelrod
00:30:27
These are two guys that basically touched on the two fundamental trend lines in American politics that have been driving elections more or less for the last 25 years. One is the the increasing unease of middle class people, and particularly white middle class people, but middle class people generally. And the and and the sense and and frankly, I have to say that in some cases, manipulation the Republican Party of of race as an issue and the notion that the Democratic Party simply wants to redistribute wealth to minorities, to the poor, while middle class people have to work hard and struggle. I mean, we have to confront these issues as a party in a fair and equitable way that doesn't exclude people if we're going to succeed.
John Heilemann
00:31:09
A number of things to say about that. One, I miss the mustache, two. I will say not to be suck-uppy about this. A lot of stuff you said there's just turned out to be quite prescient and true. Right? The racial stuff and the makers and the takers and the middle class versus the undeserving. That was already clear in 1994. Man, it's gotten way worse in the last 30 years.
David Axelrod
00:31:27
Yes, well, for good reason, because our economy has become more polarized for one thing. We're becoming a more diverse country, and that has galvanized a kind of reactionary movement. There are a lot of reasons that it has gotten worse. But if you want to trace the roots of all of this, I mean, you could go all the way back to the beginning of the republic. But since 1965, 66, when the Civil Rights Act was passed, when the Voting Rights Act was passed, and the Republicans decided to weaponize that, a lot of this has been— and, you know, look, Reagan Democrats, that's what this was about. And Clinton navigated that. And honestly, Barack Obama, you know, people think of it well, first Black president did a lot of progressive things.
John Heilemann
00:32:13
But was still navigating that.
David Axelrod
00:32:14
He navigated, yeah, he navigated it pretty skillfully.
John Heilemann
00:32:17
Yeah. Well, we'll get to that in a second. In 1994, David Axelrod was still a decade away from working on a presidential campaign.
David Axelrod
00:32:24
I did work on an ill-fated one in 1988. Paul Simon for president.
John Heilemann
00:32:27
Oh, well, yes. Those that lasted about 11 minutes. In 2004, we won't to talk about your ill-fated entanglement with, sorry what was his name? Edwards, John Edwards? But you were closer to being a journalist at that point still than you were, to where we are sitting now here today. And we could talk all day about this. But I always find it fascinating that, you know, you were a rising star in political journalism. You were the City Hall bureau chief at the Tribune. You covered, you know, one of the most interesting political cities in the country, and you've wanted to be a writer your whole life. And the question I have is, what was it that made you decide to leave, and you love to write now. You're now back in this role in a lot of ways, a journalist. What made you decide to leave our glorious, noble profession to go to become a hatchet man and a spinmeister and all the shit you did later? I mean, what was the moment of like, I got to go do that?
David Axelrod
00:33:11
That is what people who stay in journalism call people who leave journalism.
John Heilemann
00:33:16
Well, you're back.
David Axelrod
00:33:17
The dark side.
John Heilemann
00:33:17
You are back.
David Axelrod
00:33:18
I always felt like I had a foot in both worlds. And look, I had the great benefit of growing up in a Tribune newsroom, Chicago Tribune newsroom in the late seventies and early eighties. That was sort of the last gasp of the front page era. Lots of resources, editors who are just as excited about a story as you were. And I began to see by the mid-eighties, the business begin to shift the encroachment of the business side and so on. And it bothered me, the god's honest truth is, I was covering Gary Hart when he was running for president in 1984, and I covered him in Iowa. And then I felt he would he could win New Hampshire, went to New Hampshire. He won the New Hampshire primary. Walter Mondale, you'll remember the former vice president, was the front runner. Yeah. And it was a big seismic thing when Hart won. But I thought to myself, here's a guy who was George McGovern's campaign manager 12 years earlier, the quintessential liberal in many ways. Now he has to go down south and compete for votes in the South. And so my story that night was, how is he going to do it? And they had a really well conceived plan. The first stop they made was in Georgia, where Sam Nunn endorsed him around military reform. So, you know, he took some shots at labor, which was a thing, you know, so I wrote this story kind of foreshadowing all of this. And what they did was they took the quotes from my story and the quotes from the guy covering Mondale, and they merged them together into—
John Heilemann
00:34:52
A porridge. A soup, a bad tasting soup.
David Axelrod
00:34:54
So I said to the national editor. I said, look, you know, the AP does a great job of covering what people said that day. UPI, which was still around then, does a great job of that. Why do you send us out if we're not going to do unique reporting? He said hey, I'm sorry, man, we just don't have the news hole anymore. That was the day that I decided to leave.
John Heilemann
00:35:11
Sobering. A sobering moment.
David Axelrod
00:35:12
Yeah.
John Heilemann
00:35:12
I mean I'm sure it's like, that would have been a moment like, okay, this is like, maybe it's time to think about something else.
David Axelrod
00:35:16
Yeah. So I left and I, look, it was a great decision, but I always had reverence for journalists and journalism. And part of my job as a consultant and as strategist and as a White House aide was to explain to my clients what the role of journalists was. You know.
John Heilemann
00:35:34
You talked in that clip in 94. Again, at this point, you had a lot of experience with the question of race. You said that one of the main trend lines, the exploitation by the Republican Party of manipulation of race, you knew racism was obviously at the center of our politics, but you were talking at that point a lot of experience because the first thing you did basically when you left, well, one of the first things you did when you left journalism was go work for Harold Washington. I moved to Chicago to go to college in 1983 and watching Harold Washington in that period, '83 to '87, become Black mayor of Chicago was an incredible thing, the transformative thing for the city.
David Axelrod
00:36:03
One of the most interesting things I've ever experienced.
John Heilemann
00:36:05
I mean truly one of the great stories and one of the great things just to witness and watch.
David Axelrod
00:36:09
And he himself was an incredible, charismatic figure.
John Heilemann
00:36:14
And you went on and then you became kind of a specialist, right? It was like Dennis Archer in Detroit and Michael White in Cleveland and all these basically African-American mayors in big American northern cities.
David Axelrod
00:36:24
Yeah, Lee Brown in Houston.
John Heilemann
00:36:26
That became your specialty, right? Tell me about that. I mean, other than the fact that you had the experience of working for Harold, you put out a shingle in a lot of ways of being a white strategist who helped Black candidates win big city memberships and navigate some of the trickiness of the race issue in American cities.
David Axelrod
00:36:43
Yeah. First of all, I was drawn to those kind of races. The people you named were really extraordinary. And I believed in them. And I also, you know, I grew up in the civil rights era. So to be a part of that was really meaningful to me. But I also yeah, I mean, I, I learned lessons each time about I learned, for example, newspaper endorsements meant a hell of a lot more to a Black candidate than a white candidate. Because if people were going to vote for a Black candidate for the first time for an office like that, then they needed a permission structure to do it. And having establishment entities, both papers and figures. So, you know, you learn to emphasize those kinds of things more. You know, I learned that you wanted to get people to buy into, not the historic nature, but the the cleansing feeling that we don't have to be constrained by divisions, that we can vote for the best person. So, you know, there were a series of things that I that I learned. And I also learned, you know, that you want to appeal to the larger electorate, not just your base.
John Heilemann
00:37:52
Well, and part of the thing was that with all these candidate, you'll tell me, you'll correct me if I'm wrong about this. But I think one of the things that was true and this becomes very relevant to Barack Obama was you don't want to be the Black candidate.
David Axelrod
00:38:03
Right.
John Heilemann
00:38:03
You want to be a candidate who's black.
David Axelrod
00:38:05
And Obama used to say, and I thought it was a very elegant way to put it. He said, I am proudly of the Black community, but I'm not limited to it.
John Heilemann
00:38:12
Right. Right. So and there were there was all kinds of political danger in being stereotyped as the Black candidate as opposed to a candidate who's Black.
David Axelrod
00:38:19
You know, look, you know, how hard, for example, when Obama was running for president, you know, how hard his opponents in both parties tried to try to make him the Black candidate?
John Heilemann
00:38:28
Yes, exactly. So you get this reputation for having a good feel for those kinds of races, those kinds of issues, those kinds of dynamics in both directions, like how to work it and how to win. And then you stumble on the candidate of a lifetime. Really, is there any candidate you've ever seen better than Obama?
David Axelrod
00:38:45
No.
John Heilemann
00:38:45
No. So he's fantastic in a million ways. We all know, we don't even need to talk about it. Incredible order, incredibly smart, incredibly, you know, all the things, and tough and a bunch of things that people didn't see immediately.
David Axelrod
00:38:56
And I didn't. I mean, to be honest, I mean, I knew him from the time that he returned from law school to Chicago. And we were friends for ten years before he ever called me and said he want to run for the Senate, wanted my help and I mean, he didn't just drop from the sky as the candidate that you ended up seeing. He wasn't even a great candidate. He wasn't even a good candidate for the first six months of this presidential race.
John Heilemann
00:39:20
All 2007 was not really, up until October of 2007 was not a great time for Barack Obama.
David Axelrod
00:39:24
But what he had was an incredible intellect and learning curve. And it was exhilarating to watch that process. And he was very open to advice, even criticism. And he would take suggestions. You know, he'd call me every night when he was running for the Senate in 2004 with stories about people he had met. Truly moved by them. And then, you know, I had a little fundraiser at my apartment for him and I think we raised $11,000, which was a lot of money at that time for him and there were lot of, you know, like professional people, academic people and so on there. And he gave a very kind of weighty.
John Heilemann
00:40:07
Abstract.
David Axelrod
00:40:08
Speech. And afterwards I said to him, you know, every night you call me and you tell me these stories, and they're just so moving, like, why don't you weave some of those into what you're doing? Because I think people will really respond to that. And he and he did. And the convention speech you saw in 2004, which he wrote, I mean, you know, really reflected the progress that he had made. But he wasn't, in that race you say he was tough. I mean, Alan Keyes kicked his ass in a series of debates. Alan Keyes, who was stone cold crazy. Just got under his skin. And, you know, we were ahead by 50 points against Alan Keyes, who was imported from Maryland when the Republican candidate blew up in Illinois, because the geniuses in the Republican Party in Illinois thought, well, they have a Black guy, let's let's get our own Black guy.
John Heilemann
00:40:58
You don't know why Illinois is such a blue state.
David Axelrod
00:41:00
But we're up by 50. I'm watching the news. Obama's at the Puerto Rican Day Parade in Chicago. And all of a sudden there's a clip of him going up to Keyes and poking his finger in Keyes' chest. And it's like, and I call him, I said, dude, we're up 50. Like, what are you doing? And he said, the guy just gets under my skin. So, you know, I honestly didn't know when he ran for president how he would bear up under the pressures of that campaign. And I watched him grow just every single day in that race and learn when not to take the bait and what was important and what wasn't important. And as much as anything, that process, that learning curve of his was such a joy to, you know, and that's why, that's why he is, for me, the candidate of a lifetime.
John Heilemann
00:41:51
But also, I mean, look, I want to get to his presidency for a particular reason, because I think it does reflect on Biden. And there's a way to kind of think about what we saw in Obama and what we see in Biden. They're thought of as being obviously the vice president, president together. But here's the thing about this, that even though when we say, all those of us who watch this carefully and nobody watching more carefully than you, that he wasn't very good in 2007. Here's the thing. He wasn't very good in 2007, but he was still better than everybody else in the field except for Hillary Clinton in 2007. Even in his bad days, he was pretty good. He had preternatural performance skills that were better than Chris Dodd, better than Joe Biden, better than Bill Richardson, better than all the rest of those people who are in a very crowded field. He still was in second place all throughout it.
David Axelrod
00:42:30
He did.
John Heilemann
00:42:31
So all I'm saying is that, like, let's just give him credit for he grew a lot, but he started it—
David Axelrod
00:42:34
It wasn't all about performance. He also, you know, he was the only guy who opposed the Iraq war.
John Heilemann
00:42:38
He started at a high level, you know, and he got better. That's why he's a generational talent.
David Axelrod
00:42:43
Yeah. Yes.
John Heilemann
00:42:43
So you saw all of those things. And by the time he gets the White House and you go into the White House, expectations are extraordinarily high. People know that he could do a lot of things, right? Very quickly, we talked about this the other day and that part of, it made me go back. You're president now and you get something like the BP oil spill. And all of a sudden you're confronted with a thing that's nothing like a candidate has ever really contemplated and certainly has no idea, no game plan going on.
David Axelrod
00:43:08
We never discussed this during the campaign.
John Heilemann
00:43:10
And you find out that even though he has enormous strengths, like every candidate or president, he has weaknesses, too. So here's Barack Obama in the middle of the BP oil spill down Louisiana at a moment when people are like, we need empathy, we need anger, we need something. Here's Barack Obama.
Barack Obama
00:43:27
America has never experienced an event like this before. And that means that as we respond to it, not every judgment we make is going to be right the first time out. Sometimes there are going to be disagreements between experts or between federal and state and local officials or among state officials or between states about what the most effective measures will be. Sometimes there are going to be risks and unintended consequences associated with a particular mitigation strategy that we consider. In other words, they're going to be a lot of judgment calls involved here. They're not going to be silver bullets or a lot of perfect answers for some of the challenges that we face.
John Heilemann
00:44:12
So, you know, this moment of national crisis—
David Axelrod
00:44:15
You don't think that sings?
John Heilemann
00:44:16
Well in national crisis. He did press conferences in the briefing room in the White House. He did an Oval Office address. And you guys got your asses kicked during this period.
David Axelrod
00:44:26
Well, the Oval Office address was a huge mistake and one that we forced on him.
John Heilemann
00:44:31
And the, and the point I'm making here, I think, what I think you agree with, right, is that in that period, May, June 2010, when the BP oil spill was a huge crisis, every day, it was dominated the news for weeks and weeks. And every time he responded to it in any way, it was like that. He's talking about mitigation strategies and complex particulars. Like it's like a bureaucrat. There's no passion, there's no empathy, there's no anger at BP. There was, you got your asses kicked for his lack of performance skills, which everyone assumed he had in spades. I'm curious how that felt when you went through it. What did you think about.
David Axelrod
00:45:03
You know, look, I think that we should have gotten him out earlier and we did go down a second time and he was more empathetic. But I mean, honestly, you know, he was doing what he thought a president should do, which is he was really on top of it. He was managing the process. But there is this performance element. And, you know, but I would also say this because as you know, he could express anger. We saw it on guns and some other things. He obviously could touch people's emotions. But in the main, Barack Obama didn't burn hot. Right. And that was a strength that people appreciated. No drama Obama. And my experience in politics has taught me that generally people's strengths are also their weaknesses. So that was an enormous strength for him. At times it was a weakness.
John Heilemann
00:45:53
And this was one of thm. Right. So it's like the flip side of no drama Obama is Vulcan Obama detached, professorial. I mean, they're all cliches, but that's how a lot of people thought of him, they got baked into the narrative. When we talked about this the other day, one of the things you said, it's like if you ask a president to do stuff they're not good at, you're kind of asking for trouble. And the reason I'm raising it is because it gets us to Biden. Right. We talked about what 2021 was like for him. What do you think as you watched Obama and you learned that lesson, which is asking presidents do things are not good at is asking for trouble. How does that apply to Biden and are there things that he's being asked to do that he's just not very good at? And there's a way that, that in terms of the messaging questions and how he talks about stuff, how he relates to stuff, do you say like given what I learned with Obama in this context, this is what they should avoid or what they're making mistakes that they, they seem to be walking into these traps sometimes.
David Axelrod
00:46:46
Yeah, well, look, I think that there are certain things that are transferable and certain things that are only applicable to the person you're working for. I mean, I think it is important for presidents to be front and center in times of national trauma. And, you know, Biden brings enormous empathy. I've no doubt, you know, if the same thing had happened there and people were losing their businesses and homes and he would be very good on that dimension of it. One thing I also learned and we did this wrong, you know, we put Obama out too much in the first year of his presidency because we wanted to show progress. And so we sort of made him the narrator of the government instead of a narrator of a larger story. And presidents should carry a larger story. And Biden should as well. And I think they are using him a little bit like a narrator at times. And he's not even a very good narrator.
John Heilemann
00:47:40
Well, that's, I think, what kind of what I'm trying to get at. I want to let's play this. You know, it's I think one of the most, one of the things, well, you know, people still cry when they watch this.
Barack Obama
00:47:59
*Singing* Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound. That saved a wretch like me.
John Heilemann
00:48:22
That's 2015 after Dylann Roof shot up Emanuel AME in Charleston, South Carolina, a horrible, racially motivated shooting. You know, this was a moment where when you watched it, the moments of rare, of total serendipitous, spontaneous, cathartic uplift in politics are very rare. And this moment when everybody watched at the time were like, oh, my fucking God, who else could have done this other than Barack Obama?
David Axelrod
00:48:45
And you know the story on that is that it wasn't obviously written into his speech, it was on the way down. And he said to folks on the plane, you know, I think I may sing. I think I'm going to sing. I look, he he could hit rhetorical high notes that really touched people. And it's unfair to compare anyone to him in that regard. And I've seen Biden also touch people.
John Heilemann
00:49:14
This is kind of my point, though, right? You and I were up in New Hampshire in February of 2020, right? Yeah. Biden had gotten crushed in Iowa. He got crushed in February. And we were both like, he's probably done, right. And there was one town hall maybe in South Carolina. I can't remember where. But I remember talking to you on the phone, it was like, did you see?
David Axelrod
00:49:34
Yeah, yeah. It was a CNN town hall.
John Heilemann
00:49:35
He did this. He had this moment where it was like, it might have been in South Carolina around AME. And it was like, he'd done it before.
David Axelrod
00:49:42
Right.
John Heilemann
00:49:42
And every time—
David Axelrod
00:49:43
A guy who had lost his his loved one in the shooting.
John Heilemann
00:49:46
Every time he would have, his campaign would be on the ropes. He would have some moment in a town hall where that thing that we all know he has, that empathy gene would come out and he would have a moment. Right. So that is not the only thing that saved him, but it's part of what saved him. And he had it.
David Axelrod
00:49:59
No, I mean, that's his superpower.
John Heilemann
00:50:02
Yes. Where is it now?
David Axelrod
00:50:04
Well, I mean, that's the point about not becoming sort of the, I shouldn't even say narrator, becoming the announcer for the government. That's a danger that you can get sucked into. You want to show that you're engaged and involved. And so, you know, you read through sort of dry talking points. And I mean, right now, if you were going to break loose from all of that, the thing you'd want to address is we're tired as a country of this. We want to get past it. And every time we think we've shaken it, we come back to it. And I think that they need to find opportunities for him to show that quality and use him less. You know, I don't think it helps him to do a bunch of announcements.
John Heilemann
00:50:50
I know you want to trump the economy, but Joe Biden rattling off jobs numbers is not like the winning thing for him. He's not a good narrator. He's never been, even in his best days he's never been a crisp, clean narrator of things or storyteller. It's not been his strength. His strength has been as an empath.
David Axelrod
00:51:03
And almost unparalleled. You know, and that's a big part of the presidency. I mean, it's like sports. Whenever you have a candidate or a president, you want to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses.
John Heilemann
00:51:16
There was a time when you guys thought that you needed to be better on television. So you brought in Bill Daley to be chief of staff. That was one of the things you guys tried to do. Now, that did not work out well, but this notion of like, who's going to go on the shows, who's going to be on cable, when you left the White House, part of the thing that that Obama wanted was like, I need some guys, need my Carville. I need people to be out on the cables making my case. Apart from Biden, do you think the White House has done a good job of running a media operation in this environment, of being out there in this very complicated, very fractious environment that we live in? And by driving a message, have they done that well? Do they have someone who you think has been the media field general for them, the face of the administration other than Joe Biden? How do you rate them on that scale?
David Axelrod
00:51:58
You know, I'd say Jen Psaki is as good a press secretary as I've seen in my life. She's excellent, you know, but they don't send surrogates out all that often. Here's what I would say. You don't want the president of the United States to be the only ball carrier. You don't want to call his number on every play. You need other people to carry the ball and they've got some people in the cabinet who can do that. You know, most of the White House people are not terribly public. You know, Klain gets out there every once in a while. They could use more skillful players because I think it would take pressure off of Biden.
John Heilemann
00:52:39
To have to be the narrator. The thing that we think he doesn't do that well.
David Axelrod
00:52:41
And also to score. Sometimes you want to make points that are best left to others to make.
John Heilemann
00:52:48
We're going to take a break. David Axelrod, Hell & High Water. We'll be back. Talk about the future, the future 2022, which looms before us.
David Axelrod
00:52:55
Oh, good.
John Heilemann
00:52:55
Fetchingly.
David Axelrod
00:52:56
Yes.
John Heilemann
00:53:06
All right. So the midterms are looming. You guys had a midterm in 2010.
David Axelrod
00:53:14
I still have the tire tracks on my ass.
John Heilemann
00:53:15
We go back, we go back to 1994 where we saw you earlier. Talking about Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton didn't have a good midterm either. Here's Bill Clinton after the 94 midterms. And Barack Obama like back to back. Here's how they took it.
Bill Clinton
00:53:26
The Constitution gives me relevance. The power of our ideas gives me relevance. The record we have built up over the last two years and the things we're trying to do to implement it, give it relevance. The president is relevant here.
Barack Obama
00:53:40
Now, I'm not recommending for every future president that they take a shellacking like they like I did last night. You know, I'm sure there are easier ways to learn these lessons. But I do think that, you know, this is a growth process.
John Heilemann
00:53:57
Two guys both got their asses handed them. The party did. First of all, I think it's, Clinton is like, "the president is relevant," is one of my favorite things ever. Like that talk about a guy in a defensive crouch. Obama not as defensive, but I bet you would have not rather have him use the word shellacking, which is kind of like the only headline out of that.
David Axelrod
00:54:14
I mean, you know, whether he used it or not, everybody understood. I actually thought I thought he was disarming because he acknowledged what everybody knew and.
John Heilemann
00:54:23
Yeah. Tire tracks on your ass, as you said.
David Axelrod
00:54:24
And he didn't seem defeated by it.
John Heilemann
00:54:26
Right. He was, did not say the president is relevant here. Which is much worse.
David Axelrod
00:54:29
And I will tell you just one short anecdote about that. We came in the day after and he said, all right, we got our asses kicked, but we've got a lame duck session here. And I got a list of things I want to get done. And he has this long list of things and I'm like, shit, has he not read the papers? Has he, what is it? What is he not getting here? But that was him. He was always very good in these bad moments about picking himself up. He wasn't a brooder, and he was like, okay, what do we do now? And we ended up having probably the most successful lame duck sessions for a variety of reasons. Biden was a part of that.
John Heilemann
00:55:06
Beginning of the turnaround in a lot of ways for you guys, you had to be, you know, cut a deal with Republicans, got a bunch of stuff going, started to elevate and get him back out of the weeds and up top.
David Axelrod
00:55:14
And now we had another trough in the summer of 2011, with the debt ceiling.
John Heilemann
00:55:19
Are we going to see Joe Biden in that position you think, about a year from now?
David Axelrod
00:55:22
It's highly likely that Democrats are going to have a less than stellar day right now as we're sitting here. Now, things can change. If the the feelings about the economy change, if the virus is truly in the rearview mirror, if some of the benefits of the things that he's passed are obvious to people, then they have a fighting chance to at least limit losses. But remember, you don't have to lose but a few seats in the House to lose control with redistricting and the historical tides, the only two times since World War II that a governing party hasn't lost seats. So it would be surprising if he didn't. And the Senate is a 50/50 Senate, and the results of the November 3rd election were certainly a disquieting harbinger. I would say it's likely that he is going to have to address that.
John Heilemann
00:56:09
So as you sit here today, again, that's all we can do is sit here today and look forward. You look at where the,
David Axelrod
00:56:14
Let's sit here tomorrow.
John Heilemann
00:56:15
Where the economy is. You know, we look at people, their peers have different views about inflation, how persistent a problem that is, how bad it can be. Obviously, if it's persistent, it continues to rise, you're fucked. The supply chain issues are out there. There's a lot of job growth, though. So there's things that are encouraging. We don't know where Covid's going to take us. Right. But as we sit here today, given the slenderness of the majorities and other things that we've seen, you'd say like it's pretty likely the House is going to be Republican.
David Axelrod
00:56:40
Yeah.
John Heilemann
00:56:40
You think the Senate, the 50/50 Senate is if you look at the seats that are in play, do you kind of expect more likely than not that we'll have a Republican Senate also?
David Axelrod
00:56:48
I think it's a closer call, but I wouldn't be surprised.
John Heilemann
00:56:51
Okay. So then you have interestingly, right, Beto O'Rourke going to run for governor in Texas. He just announced that. Stacey Abrams just announced she's gonna run for governor of Georgia. Ron DeSantis. We're not going see Andrew Gillum I don't think again in Florida, given some of the circumstances. But you've got those three big gubernatorial races again and some others, right? When you look at, those were like national races in '18 and even in a year, that was great for Democrats, great for Democrats in 2018. Beto lost to Ted Cruz. Stacey Abrams lost to Brian Kemp and Ron DeSantis won in Florida. There's a lot of focus on those races again. Do you think right like that we should be focused on those races and do you think Beto has a chance to become the next governor of Texas? Stacey Abrams has a chance to become the next governor of Georgia? What do you think?
David Axelrod
00:57:32
Look, I think that they are taking on tough races. You know, Beto has proven himself to be a very talented performer in Texas. And there's been a lot of churn in the politics of Texas. You've got a Republican governor who has been as right as could be and a political direction who is actually being challenged from the farther right. I mean, there are a lot of churns, so.
John Heilemann
00:57:54
Greg Abbott, yeah. But he's also about as noxious as Ted Cruz.
David Axelrod
00:57:57
Yeah, you would be anything but lying if you said this is an uphill fight for him. Stacey Abrams, closer call. They're obviously going to have a lot of turmoil in the Republican primary in Georgia because Trump is out for Kemp and she's built an extraordinary organization there, but still an uphill fight. And the challenge for them is going to be to try and break free of any sort of national forces and kind of focus very much on the politics of their particular states.
John Heilemann
00:58:31
Texas Republicans basically think there's no way Beto can win because he lost to Ted Cruz in a year when Trump was in office. You know, this is the problem. In '18, you had Trump. Enormous Democratic turnout because people just wanted to do something to try to rein in Trump. Do you think there's a world where Democrats with Joe Biden in the White House under these circumstances turn out in those kind of numbers? What would it take?
David Axelrod
00:58:53
I mean, that is the challenge. And this is why parties in control tend to lose seats, because these elections are reactions to the party in control. And if people are unhappy, that makes it harder. And people who support their own party tend to be a little self-satisfied. And so it's a huge challenge. I mean, one of the things that seemed to have been disproven in Virginia, but I think is not entirely clear, is if Donald Trump is astride the playing field and is trying to put his imprint on all of these races and is clearly poised to run for president, does this have an impact? He's a turnout machine for both sides. So, you know, there are factors here, but you you are laying out the fundamental challenge. It is very hard to turn people out when you're the incumbent party in a midterm election, even when things are good.
John Heilemann
00:59:49
That's the challenge. How do you get Democrats to turn out in this, you know, there's all these other variables that are complicated. There are two flip side questions here. One of which is a lot of ink spilled, a lot of words spoken in the off year elections about whether wokeness on the Democratic side is a fatal problem or at least a very significantly bad problem for Democrats. And, you know, you had people like James Carville made a big deal out of it. But you pointed to you looked at what happened in Portland, what happened on the defund the police stuff, all the stuff right but a lot of things on the cultural side. How big a problem, do you think, wokeness, and I'm using that word broadly, but you know what I mean. How big a problem do you think wokeness is, and the way in which the left, the squad, voted against Biden's infrastructure bill. Now, I did not really think there was going to be a fuck Joe Biden caucus in the Democratic Party. But apparently there is. And there are the ones, there's those six people. Like, how big a problem is that politically for Democrats that left wing and the wokeness issue broadly?
David Axelrod
01:00:50
Well, I don't think that the six of them voting against the infrastructure bill is a problem.
John Heilemann
01:00:53
But I mean, their image is being the dominant image for people of the Democratic Party, that's what people see in some parts of America as being what today's Democratic Party is.
David Axelrod
01:01:00
I mean, I think what's important is what the party itself and Biden articulates. Joe Biden never said defund police and was very clear that he didn't support that. He never coddled rioters. Very, very clear on that. And most of the leadership of the Democratic Party, the same. So this was something that was upended on Democrats. But I think Democrats need to be aware that those things were damaging.
John Heilemann
01:01:27
Yes. And in 2021.
David Axelrod
01:01:29
Yes. So I think they have to be conscious of that. And I think, you know, we're sitting here in the city of New York. People are looking at your new mayor. Yes. As a guy who ran a slightly different kind of campaign. We saw some examples of that in the off year elections elsewhere. I think people are going to take a look at that. Look, my general view is that Democrats run better when the elections are not all about cultural issues. They do better when they're focused on kitchen table issues. And that's where they should be. And I think the other thing is what I told you before, which is Democrats should not be sort of lecturing from some moral high plane to the rest of America, you know, from metropolitan towers about those issues. So I think there's a there is soul searching for Democrats to do. You know, the one thing I will say is, you know, there is a false equivalence.
John Heilemann
01:02:27
Right. I'm not doing that.
David Axelrod
01:02:27
Because all of those folks who you mentioned, I mean, I disagreed with him on that and maybe on some other things. But they are trying to promote an agenda that they feel is best for them. Whereas, you know, you got nihilists on the other side who just want to tear it all down.
John Heilemann
01:02:43
And I was getting right to it. That's why I said there are two sides of this coin. So I saved the worst for last in this context. Right. Republican party's, you know, we talked about the big lie already and how fucked up it all is. There's a there's a larger thing. And I know you're concerned about this, right? People said 2020 was the most important election of our lifetime. Now, people look at 2022 and seeing these voter suppression laws, the voter subversion laws, the way we're changing the way the ballots are counted.
David Axelrod
01:03:05
Voter nullification.
John Heilemann
01:03:06
Nullification, subversion, whatever you want to call it. The stuff that happens on the back side, what ballots get counted, how do they get counted, who does the counting. Make that stuff partisan. The Trump agenda to fuck with democracy. Right. And that's, the Republican Party is all on board for that, right? So that's clear.
David Axelrod
01:03:22
Yeah, and disturbing.
John Heilemann
01:03:24
And super disturbing. So I ask that question. Is that like, what do you see as you look ahead? I mean, it's disturbing. Where do you think that's going? And are you as freaked out about what it means for the future of democracy as I am? Which is a lot.
David Axelrod
01:03:36
Yeah. Yeah. No, I think this is the most important issue that we face. Look, I've had disagreements with Republican presidents and Republican politicians forever, but this to me is not a partisan issue. Whether or not we're going to have fair and honest elections, whether we're going to allow the manipulation that this portends to me is fundamental to the functioning of a healthy democracy. And yeah, I'm freaked out about it. If we lose that, we lose everything.
John Heilemann
01:04:09
We had Chris Krebs on the show and Chris Krebs, who is not false equivalence, okay. And I want to frame this as this because he says Republicans are horrible about all this stuff. He's like, I'm a single issue voter and I'm a single cause person, which is American democracy, are you on team democracy or not. And he's not saying that they're the same. But when he looked at it, talked about what he thought was coming. Was that, given everything that's going on, that Democrats inevitably are going to say and maybe rightly, are going to say in 2022 that democracy was undermined, whether it was in suppression efforts or subversion slash nullification efforts. And that his concern as just an observer of this process, what we saw in 2020 with the big lie, what we're going to see in 2022, is that we're going to enter what he called an anti-democratic death spiral. That, again, Democrats will have more legitimate claims, but that the faith in the system is unraveling and it's almost inevitable to unravel. I mean, that to me, I haven't really heard anybody put it quite that way. Take the who's right and who's wrong out of it. That that's the one thing we always counted on, right, was that everybody thought that our elections were fair and now we're on this path towards the anti-democratic death spiral. That to me is the nightmare scenario.
David Axelrod
01:05:19
And it's also,
John Heilemann
01:05:21
Ahead of 2024.
David Axelrod
01:05:21
We haven't talked about how malign sort of state actors can manipulate that, and I'm sure that's what Krebs is concerned about. I mean, these are fault lines that are, that through social media and other techniques can be split wide open. And yeah, I think his concern is valid. You know, I mean, the the goal of autocrats, of Putin and others who aspire to be Putin is to essentially send the message of de-legitimacy that there are no rules that are really, that one needs to observe because they're all corrupt. The world is corrupt. And, you know, we're The Hunger Games, right? That's Donald Trump's vision. And if that's what we surrender to, then we will be surrendering our democracy. I have no, you know, doubt about it. I think people need to be very, very alert and sober about this. What we're facing in the next few years aren't normal elections. Our democracy is about to be pressure tested in a way that we haven't seen, you know, since the Civil War.
John Heilemann
01:06:28
So we agree about this. And Joe Biden gave a speech in 2021, a speech in Philadelphia about voting rights. There's a couple pieces of legislation in Washington about voting rights. He said we're headed to the new Jim Crow. He said it was an existential threat. I really don't know if he said anything else about i the rest of, all of the rest of 2021. I've seen a president, Barack Obama, when he thought that the most important thing in the world was to get the Affordable Care Act passed. He talked about it every day. If it's an existential threat and it's the new Jim Crow, has Joe Biden done enough about this issue in the course of his first year in office?
David Axelrod
01:06:59
I actually. I don't see it as the new Jim Crow because Jim Crow I mean, when you think about Jim Crow, I mean, I think that's hyperbole.
John Heilemann
01:07:07
But has he done enough to preserve our democracy?
David Axelrod
01:07:10
Well, look, I think what you see is a guy who's focused like a laser on a couple of things that are sort of the hinges, the bedrock of his administration and perhaps his legacy. But, I mean, it comes down to this at the end of the day, unless you do away with the filibuster in the Senate, you are not going to do anything on this. And the question is, can he bring 50 Democrats together, including Manchin, to do away with the filibuster, at least on this issue. And I presume what's going to happen is as soon as they pass this reconciliation bill, that they move to that next. But time's a-wasting here. And if nothing is done, I think history's verdict is going to be very harsh. If we can read history, if history is allowed to be written.
John Heilemann
01:08:05
If we still have history. All the libraries have been burned down by the Trumpists. I want to play one more piece of sound, because you can't talk about American politics in any year anymore without talking about the right wing media echo chamber. And this specific thing. Here's Tucker Carlson talking about Joe Biden's mental fitness.
Tucker Carlson
01:08:20
We've learned a lot in the past five days. Maybe the most important thing we've learned is that Joe Biden is not capable of running the country. Joe Biden is senile. Saying that out loud is not an attack on Biden. Any decent person feels sorry for him. You watch him gaze vacantly into the middle distance or stumble like a drunk man trying to cross an icy street as he careens through his prepared remarks. There's no joy in watching any of that. It could be any of us someday and probably will be. It's not Joe Biden's fault. He can't think clearly. It's an indictment of the people around him.
John Heilemann
01:08:53
The most popular man on cable television, Tucker Carlson, biggest audience. We can spend all day on Tucker Carlson. I have two questions that drive out of this, right. So that's just pure disinformation, right. And obviously with a political agenda, etc., etc.. How does Joe Biden deal with that problem, that the right wing echo chamber is really big and really powerful? We see it in the big lie and we see it here. How do you deal with that if you're Joe Biden and then the subsidiary question? There are a lot of people that you meet and I meet every day who aren't necessarily, here is Tucker Carlson, and who don't think Joe Biden's senile, but that rings a chord for them a little bit, which is like, is Joe Biden really all there. Is he really like on top of his game? We hear, you hear it 20 times a day from people who are Democrats who say it like in a concerned way, not like a harsh way. How do you deal with that? There are two different problems there. The disinformation republic— a right wing problem, and the age competence question that is going to dog him going forward. There's just no question about it.
David Axelrod
01:09:48
Yeah, well, I mean, that's one of the hazards of running for president late in life as he has. And that's something he's going to have to contend with after the midterms. If people feel like the bottom dropped out in the midterms and you know, there'll be a lot of talk about that in 2024 and so on. The antidote to it is to be very accomplished. The answer to it is to achieve things. You know, he's going to look a lot better if he passes his bill, things start rolling, the economy starts improving. I mean, I'm not sure that he is capable of like vastly improving his performance. And for his team, the question is, how do you put him in scenarios and formats that maximize his ability to perform well? And how often do you do it? But at the end of the day, beyond his performance is his record. And does he look like he is moving these pieces around in a competent and and efficient way and people can see that progress? That, to me, is the answer. You know, this has been Trump's theme. That was his theme in 2020 and failed then. But, you know, it's going to linger because he is old. And he isn't the stentorian speaker he once felt he was.
John Heilemann
01:11:11
Is there anything to be done about the menace that is the right wing disinformation conveyor belt and, not Tucker in particular, although he's horrible. But like, is there anything be done about that as from the White House? I don't mean like what passing laws, is there anything we can do about it? Is there anything Biden can do about it? How do you address that problem? Because it's a huge political fact. Dealing with that machine, that's not just Fox News, but as OANN and Newsmax and all it.
David Axelrod
01:11:35
Well, and all of social media.
John Heilemann
01:11:36
And all of social media.
David Axelrod
01:11:37
I mean Facebook.
John Heilemann
01:11:38
Is there anything that you can do about it?
David Axelrod
01:11:40
Yeah. I mean, I don't know the answer to that, but I know that we need to think deeply about it. You know, how do you curb the impact of disinformation? How do you counter it? I think this is, you know, right up there with the survival of democracy is this question, because it's central to the survival of democracy, not just the Democratic Party, not just Joe Biden, but, you know, if there is this very powerful machine that can transmit disinformation. You know, we've seen it in history before. That is a pillar of successful autocracy. And, you know, Tucker Carlson is a highly calibrated instrument for that.
John Heilemann
01:12:21
A democratic death spiral, autocracy, Tucker Carlson, my last question. With all these things, fucking gloom and doom and dark and all this shit, you're basically fundamentally an optimist. So I want you to end of the session like what's the rosy scenario?
David Axelrod
01:12:33
You know, I run this Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago. And one of the reasons that I do what I do is because I want to be with young people and while I see my job as trying to inspire these young people. What I find is that they mostly inspire me and that this is the most public spirited group of young people I've seen since the sixties. And the challenge for us is, can we hold it together for ten years while they come of age, can we resist what is going to be an absolute torrent in the next 4 to 8 years and come out with our democracy intact? If we can I think the future is really bright because I think the folks who are coming are better than the folks who are here now. But we owe it to them to make a big battle to hold this together. And we need to recruit them to help us do it.
John Heilemann
01:13:26
David Axelrod believes children are our future. Let them lead the way, whatever that thing is. It's awesome to see you and I'm not being at all dismissive. I know how much the IOP means to you and I actually find this true. I get asked the same question, it's like every time I go out and speak at a college and place, I'm always like, yeah, like I'm really scared about the future. Like, in a way I've never been in my life before. Democracy, the climate, the whole fucking thing. It's a, it's like I said, it's apocalyptic. And then you go and hang out with some college students and you're like, you know, these guys are pretty amazing. If we can just hold it together long enough to let them inherit and get us in the grave and let them take over it'll be all right.
David Axelrod
01:13:58
Yeah. No, I agree. I agree.
John Heilemann
01:14:01
Let's, you know, I was just like, we should just shuffle off a little faster, right. And clear the way for these people.
David Axelrod
01:14:05
I'm ready to go, man. I want to hand it off to them.
John Heilemann
01:14:08
You're a great American.
David Axelrod
01:14:09
Thank you. Same to you.
John Heilemann
01:14:10
And really, a great, and a great Chicagoan, which actually is more important than a great American. Thank you David Axelrod.
David Axelrod
01:14:15
Well, people from Chicago would say that.
John Heilemann
01:14:17
Hell & High Water is a podcast from The Recount. Thanks again to David Axelrod for being here. If you like this episode of Hell & High Water, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a rating, make it a nice rating, in the Apple Podcasts app. I'm your host and the executive editor of The Recount, John Heilemann. Grace Weinstein is a co-creator of Hell & High Water. Leah Jackson and David Wilson engineer the podcast. Justin Churmil handles the research. Margot Gray she's our assistant producer. Stephanie Stender, still we're wondering: hologram or post producer, or hologramic post producer, one or the other, she's certainly doing all the work. And the guy who sits over her presiding in kind of self-satisfied glory given some turns of events in recent Chilean politics. Anyway, he's a man, the myth, the legend. His name is Christian Fidel Castro Rossel, our executive producer.