EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Misha Zelinsky:

Mike Murphy, welcome to Diplomates. Thanks for joining us today, mate.

Mike Murphy:

Well, Misha, great to be here. Thanks for inviting me now.

Misha Zelinsky:

Now, so many places we could start our thought. We’ll get to the current political situation in the U.S. shortly, but I thought a great place to start would be talking about November 8, 2016. You’re a very prominent never Trumper and you were a Never Trumper then. I was wondering if you might just take us through the thoughts running through your mind on election night.

Mike Murphy:

Well, it was a mix of shock and horror. I’ve been anti-Trump since 19, probably 93 only because I was working back then for the newly elected governor of New Jersey, Christine Todd Whitman, and Trump was slippering around Atlantic city. So we had some unfortunate experiences with him, so I was no stranger to his character and his problems. Now, that said, like most people in my business, I was very surprised when he won because it was pretty obvious from the polling and just the normal rules of political gravity that he was going to get clobbered in the popular vote.

Mike Murphy:

And most of the time, almost all the time, it’s only happened five times in American history where the popular vote does not elect the president because of course we have the electoral college, which is old device from the original founders, kind of like the Senate where the smaller States have outsized power. California has two senators, little Rhode Island has two senators, so it works the same with electoral college.

Mike Murphy:

So he was able to draw the inside straight Michigan, Pennsylvania, my home state of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, three States by the way that had not voted Republican and not been carried by the Republican Party in a presidential race since the 1980s. But narrowly 77,000 votes out of 13-and-a-half million, the three States all cast together, the margin was that small, but it was enough.

Mike Murphy:

I remember I was there with James Carville, we both worked for NBC News and he was getting texts, I was getting texts from friends of ours out in the field with just disbelief that Trump was showing this weird pattern. He did worse than Mitt Romney, our last Republican candidate in a lot of suburbs, but in what we call exsubs, which are farther out suburbs with cheaper housing, but a lot of middle class, lower middle class people. And then out in rural areas, he was blowing the doors off it.

Mike Murphy:

So it started to dawn on us that the polls were going to be wrong, they were going to predict the popular vote right. Hillary won by nearly three million votes, but in the distribution of the vote in those industrial Midwestern States and a few other places, he was going to come really close and maybe win the damn election, so it was just complete shock. Then when I got my pulse under control about that, because I was not excited about Hillary Clinton, but I thought Trump was a cheap demagogue, and a populist and not a conservative, and I thought, what is this guy going to do?

Mike Murphy:

Then for about a month, I’d started thinking, well, give him a chance, surround with staff. I saw Reince Priebus that night in the middle of the night at NBC and I knew him from the party. He had been our party chairman and he was rumored to go in as chief of staff. I remember I pulled him aside at 3:00 in the morning election night and I said, “Look, you got to take it. You got to surround this guy because…” And he’s like, “We know, we know. We’re going to build a cage. We’re on it.” Then it began.

Mike Murphy:

I also felt like an idiot because I… Sorry for the long answer, but I had done a podcast during the election called Radio Free GOP, a precursor to Hacks on Tap, was basically just me screaming about Trump and then interviewing operatives about how they got into politics and their stories. Still on iTunes if anybody cares. And so I had predicted with great certainty a thousand times he’d lose and then there he was winning, so I thought, oh, this is great. I’ll be eating crow here for a year, and I did.

Misha Zelinsky:

Well, I have to say, you’re not alone in predicting that Hillary would win. I’ve famously said that Hillary wouldn’t just win, but win well, that she’ll absolutely crash it. So you certainly not by yourself there, mate, consider that point in this podcast on a number of occasions.

Mike Murphy:

Well, she half did, that’s all I’ll say. Here’s a little bit of American political tribute, you know who… So the electoral college, and again, it’s happened five times in American history, never in the 20th century, twice the 21st, 2000 and 2016 where the electoral college has been different than the popular vote. You know who invented it? Alexander Hamilton. That’s the song that never made the musical.

Mike Murphy:

I came up with this stupid thing [inaudible 00:06:09], but yeah, and it’s here to stay, so we’ll see. This year looks a little more aligned, but we have a lot of campaign yet to happen.

Misha Zelinsky:

Now, Mike, I’m curious for you take on Trump’s first term thus far. We’re coming up to the end of his first term. You’re obviously very bearish about his presidency overall as a Never Trumper, but how would you assess it? Has it been what you expected? A bit better? Worse? Care for your take.

Mike Murphy:

Worse. Yeah, I thought, all right, they’re going to put the training wheels on him. One of the things that is true about this, Trump didn’t think he was going to win, Trump’s people didn’t think he was going to win. Kellyanne Fitzpatrick Conway, I always call her Kellyanne Fitzpatrick because that was her original name when she started in politics, so my apologies it’s Conway, Kellyanne Conway, she was calling…

Mike Murphy:

There’s a thing in American politics, the media spend millions and millions, millions of dollars on exit polling, which is they do it as well as it can be done, but it’s shaky. Because you have to do two things; you intercept people at polls when they come out and say, “How did you vote?” And you try to get bellwether precincts, but it’s a big country, and again, we learned about you got to really understand the distribution of the vote with the electoral college.

Mike Murphy:

The other thing people forget is what about absentee voters? Well, you do a phone poll two days before the election. Then you put it on a computer and you predict. So during the day, the exit polling data comes in and waves, so the morning vote, plus the absentee, the afternoon vote and the evening vote. And there is a projection that the exit polling service at the three networks or the five networks, wherever they are now control sends out an hourly update where the number keeps moving, and that leaks.

Mike Murphy:

Some of us get it, other people leak, and it’s a big sport among politicals, “What are the exits?” Starting at about 3:00 in the afternoon really. So the exits were coming out and they’re bad for Trump. And so Kellyanne was on the phone calling all the national reporters. “This campaign was screwed up, if they’d only listen to me. I knew they were going to lose, that darn Reince Priebus.” And unbelievable because it’s the snake pit in their world and culture is set from the top.

Mike Murphy:

Then Trump is sitting there on election night and they’ve got the classic five TVs in the suite and they’re starting to predict he’s going to win and he doesn’t believe it. So he’s checking each channel, he think it’s a prank, it’s like it’s fake. Then the famous story, I wasn’t in the car, so I can’t say it’s absolutely true, but I believe it, and the people who also believe it were almost in the car. He turned to then PRA, Hope… God, it’s early here and I’m trying to remember. She left and came.

Mike Murphy:

Anyway, he turned to a PRA as they drove through the White House gates to begin the transition process and he looked at her and said, “All I was trying to do was increase ratings on the apprentice.” So he was more surprised than anybody, so I thought, okay. If the dog has caught the car, he’ll bring in some war horses and it’ll be a Jimmy Carter semi-competent buffoonish presidency, but he won’t actually try to be president other than ride around in the big plane and try to find the alien remains in Roswell out at the Air Force base in Nevada.

Mike Murphy:

It was like a movie of some kind of clown talk radio person got beamed up into the presidency, what would they do? Well, do I have a yacht? They’d get into the quality of life. I thought that would probably happen. Instead, he tried to be president and most of the serious people wouldn’t work for him because he has a bad style, he’s abusive and he won’t read anything. The military briefers and the intelligence people among themselves were all impressive career types would walk in there and they used to call the briefing story time like they were talking to a five-year-old because he wouldn’t read anything.

Mike Murphy:

So they learned to quickly do cartoons and charts. I used to joke, sock puppets were going to be next because he has zero attention span. What he likes to do is pace and talk about the election, and how they tried to steal it from him, and he only lost New Hampshire because they bused in union act and it’s crazy. In every campaign, sometimes you have to suffer foolish donors who give the party a fair amount of money.

Mike Murphy:

And they mean well, most of them are great, but you have a few who make their fortune and plastic coat hangers. And they give you a 30-minutes on how the wire coat hanger is a joke, and if hadn’t been for their genius and the plastic coat hanger, they wouldn’t have all this money. They could use that same insight to fix the entitlement budget problems, they’re blowhards. Well, it’s like a guy like that got elected and here we are.

Misha Zelinsky:

Now, we’ve got to get a little on topic. This is of course a foreign policy show. I’m curious to get an insight from you. Trump’s first term, what’s been interesting is how in the few times that Trump’s ran into trouble with the house Republicans who have essentially backed him most of the way. The times he’s run into trouble with them or bumped up against them has been on foreign policy, be it what happened in Helsinki, some of the issues relating to NATO and other matters of that nature.

Misha Zelinsky:

How costly do you think it’s been for the U.S. in terms of Trump’s approach to our allies and alliances, including the Australia AND U.S. Alliance? And also what is it with Trump’s tendency to lord strong men and dictators? And why does he seem to push away his friends and get drawing closer people that in regimes that had essentially been enemies of the United States and these types of characters that are quite unsavory? He seems to cling on to them. What is it about him that does that?

Mike Murphy:

It is the question. I’m not enough of a psychiatrist to really go through it, other than his dad had a little deuce step in his behavior. They didn’t have a great relationship, he was an authoritarian. Look into Fred Trump. I always joke if there was a time machine in one trip, I would not go back and kill baby Hitler, I’d go back and tell Fred Trump to be less of an asshole to his kid because 45 years later would solve a lot of problems.

Mike Murphy:

He has shown a real hostility to the classic alliances, and I don’t think he understands geopolitics. A friend of mine, I don’t want to blow up his career, who was a very distinguished American career person in the foreign policy space went into the White House and was stunned to see that as bad as he thought it would be, and this person is no amateur. It was worse and Trump literally had a limited understanding of basic geography.

Mike Murphy:

So I think everything is transactional to Trump and it’s all very small time like what are we paying for Ramstein Air Base in Frankfurt, it’s high rent. He doesn’t understand the Atlantic Alliance, he’s hostile to it. Clearly, Australia is a critical ally of ours and increasingly geopolitically even more important one, linchpin in many ways of what ought to be our Asian network of alliances along with the Koreans and Japan, and he just seems to have an instant hostility.

Mike Murphy:

He doesn’t do protocol well. He has a hard time doing two-way conversations. He’s blowhard again so you’re sitting there, you’re the prime minister of Australia, you have to listen to this guy, ill informed whinge on and on. I’ll tell you a funny story. Erskine Bowles who had been a big leading Democrat, had been a White House Chief of Staff, good friend of mine. We both got a call cause in the U.S. if you’re known in politics, there’s a whole, and I’ll call it a racket because that’s somewhat accurate.

Mike Murphy:

Because I’m on cable TV bloviating a bit and Erskine of course is highly esteemed. You get called to do paid speeches, so you go to the outboard motor dealers and tour, you joke around or [inaudible 00:14:03] do it, or Carville or the gala, and you entertain the crowd, but it’s… And then they give you a big check, and dinner, and you go home. It’s easiest the dollars in the world.

Mike Murphy:

Well, we both got a call from the speakers bureau early in the Trump presidency, “Well, you want to go to London?” And I always want to go to London, but it’s going to take three or four days. “Well, paid trip or your fee. When are we leaving?” So Erskine and I wind up in an elite hotel there, and I got to be a little careful cause I think we’re under an NDA and there are only 12 people in the room, and they are 12 of the oldest, richest, private families in Europe; France, UK, Germany.

Mike Murphy:

Barnes Heineken was sitting there, big, big names, Rothschild. We had a very polite discussion, but their question was yours with a little more of an exclamation point, which is, “What the hell is going on? Don’t you idiots understand?” There was a German that was very persuasive. “Our largest trading partner is Russia, we don’t like them, they’re next door. And you guys are the metronome clock of the Atlantic Alliance and now all we hear are clown shoes tapping around and baby gurgles, and this is really bad and you clowns get it.”

Mike Murphy:

Now, we of course got it, but it was hard to explain that we’d had this eruption and we would have a clown president for a while. Long answer, to get to the meat of it, we have damaged our alliances, we’ve emboldened our enemies. We’ve taught every dictator in the world that bad behavior can be rewarded. Hell, we went out and legitimize Kim Jong-il for no trade. I came up in the foreign policy world and rule number one is you want to get an American president eyeball to eyeball, you earn that with behavior.

Mike Murphy:

Instead just out of vanity and ego, this guy shows up to arguably the worst regime in modern history in terms of what it’s done to its own people. It made Stalin look like amateur night and there he is. So the next president is… It’s going to be interesting and I’m sure there will be grins in Canberra, in Bonn, in London, and Paris because there will be relief that there’d be somebody back to normal, but they’re also going to get a price.

Mike Murphy:

We’re going to be paying some taxes here, making up for the egregious behavior of this guy, and that’s the way the world works. So it has been really damaging, I think to our position in the world and there’s less security now. There’s more instability.

Misha Zelinsky:

Well, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because during the Trump presidency in his first term, what are the words to look into U.S. leadership and saying, “Well, there’s still a role for U.S. leadership and a craving for traditional U.S. leadership?”

Mike Murphy:

Right, right.

Misha Zelinsky:

And so whether or not the Trump presidency is a reorientation of U.S. policy or whether or not it’s an aberration is going to be decided in November and it’s a critical question for the world.

Mike Murphy:

Yeah. It reminds me of it’s like a jet airliner and the pilots died, and the copilot died, and they’re going passenger to passenger to see if anybody has a pilot’s license before a thousand miles. And luckily there are some pilots on the plane, they’re just in the back row and it’s going to take them five months to find one.

Misha Zelinsky:

That’s a chilling metaphor, mate. Now, we’ve talked a little bit about it, but the question of trust, I want to talk about trust in politics. Because Trump in many ways is the consequence of low trust, but he’s also the destructor of trust. A lot of people will say, “Should we trust Trump?” One of the things that’s interesting when you look at some [inaudible 00:17:37] on coronavirus, about 20% of Americans trust that the president of the United States on information about the coronavirus, which is about half of Trump’s approval rating.

Misha Zelinsky:

So half of the people that approve of Trump don’t trust him on coronavirus, which is peculiar to say the least. But what is low trust more generally tell us about politics? And should it worry us? And do you think trust can be restored in politics more importantly? Because it is a critical ingredient in democracy.

Mike Murphy:

Yeah, that’s a great question because the glue of the democracy is some trust like that. I think it’s working at several levels. I think when Trump first got elected, one of the problems we have in our culture, and I ran Arnold Schwarzenegger’s campaign for governor California, the second biggest job here. And Arnold was the first classic example since maybe governor George Murphy, no relation, back in California who came out of Hollywood and then later Ronald Reagan.

Mike Murphy:

But Arnold was a pop culture celebrity who just made a huge audacious leap sideways into national politics. But I can tell you, Arnold is very shrewd and he knew that he had to build a machine to be ready to govern. Arnold on movie sets would spend all this time in his trailer hanging around with political policy nerds to learn the business. He took it very seriously. Trump was also a move and pop culture, but he didn’t take it seriously, nor did he build a bunch of strong staff relationships.

Mike Murphy:

I think one of the things in the culture that happened when Trump moved from pop culture was people had become so cynical through political doublespeak and Washington’s arrogance, the gilded city that’s never felt a recession that the stakes of politics became low enough that your vote was a joke. You saw in Italy, they’re voting for baggy pants comedians, you’ve seen this before in other places. Well, your vote did mean to say, “Oh, I’ll give it to that guy who’s going to drain the swamp.”

Mike Murphy:

There was a combination of antipathy for institutions. We have a middle class that’s been squeezed by flat real wages for a long time, so the American dream is not working for them. They’re working harder and getting less. Then you’ve got the financial engineering class, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, though they’re of course more innovative, but people at the top corporate America, particularly Wall Street who when they win, they make billions, when they lose, we bail them out.

Mike Murphy:

And so there’s all this anger, and so here comes a guy who’s credentialed outside of politics because he’s on TV for 10 years on prime time being… Even if all he’s doing is firing comedians for not selling enough cotton candy at some… Remember, it’s all product placement. The whole thing is rigged. It’s a TV ad, is a TV show for products, they paid to be there. But Trump was the in-charge guy.

Mike Murphy:

When you did the data and it was all art of the deal. He’ll get things done, he’ll shake it up. And the risk of Trump was not really in the calculation because people hadn’t had real, real, real 20th century pain in a while. We’ve had wars, but wars with a volunteer army, not a draft. We had the great recession in 2007, but we hadn’t had a lot of economic pain, not real economic pain since then.

Mike Murphy:

So it was easy to take a flyer on Trump and laugh and it’s all entertainment. And then corona came and all of a sudden the stakes shot up. A lot of our political class, he was like, “Well, the Mueller report, the this, the that. Why doesn’t anybody abandon him?” Blah, blah, blah. Well, two things were going on. One, people were abandoning him. Trump has had crappy poll numbers since a month after he got elected, so I’ve been short his reelection ever since then, but they’ve gotten worse.

Mike Murphy:

But this Washington stuff looks like another Washington food fight. The Republicans say this and that. And you go to a focus group, somebody will say, “Yeah, he got dirt from the Russians about Hillary, but you know Hillary, she would’ve gotten dirt from the Russians about him and she could have done it. They’re all the same. They’re all corrupt.” Blah, blah, blah. A sign of institutional weakness, which ought to worry us because we used to hold presidents to a standard, which would force them to act the standard.

Mike Murphy:

So now with the coronavirus, it’s in your life. Your plan’s closing, you’re in economic pain, real economic pain. Your brother-in-law’s restaurant may never open. Your 62-year old uncle has it and he’s on a ventilator in a hospital, even money chance to live are worse. So a real crisis came and all of a sudden it is like the movie, Premise where the actor who plays a cop suddenly has to solve a real case and it all falls apart. And that’s what’s happened to Trump, and Trump’s method is the lie.

Mike Murphy:

You saw the exaggeration and superlatives, greatest ever. Swallow a Christmas tree light, drink a little Clorox. It’s just ripped them to pieces. It’s funny, most leaders, and this has happened with the American governors in most places until recently during the first wave of the virus, their polling goes up because it’s a crisis, they’re standing there, are five guys in state trooper uniforms and doctor outfits, and they got a plan. People want authority when they’re scared, so they cling to it.

Mike Murphy:

Fauci, the chief doctor in our world who’s highly respected, his polling now, 80% he’s a national celebrity. Trump’s gone down significantly, even among as you say, his own people where he’s got real problems, a third of them are more not buying in because he’s been so bad in the spotlight and all he’s done is lie and they know. So this has been the final neck breaker for him politically, which is why right now, Joe Biden, who was far from a perfect super formidable candidate, as far as candidate skills, he’s sitting on the count of numbers that looked like Nixon in ’72 or Reagan in ’84.

Mike Murphy:

Joe is going to be damn hard for Trump to beat because Trump has dug himself in such a horrible hole and he doesn’t seem to have any of the tools to get himself out of it through being president. Now, maybe he’ll have the tools to run a campaign and vilifies Biden, that’s in his wheelhouse and his comfort level, but it’s hard to run against the government when you are the government.

Misha Zelinsky:

Now, I’m super keen to dig into the 2020 campaign and Biden versus Trump, but before we get to that, just want to round out this point on trust. You talked about the food fight in Washington, how much of a problem is this blue team, red team approach? And how critical is it to have friendships across the aisle or even just relationships across the aisle? And you’re famously very close with David Axelrod who was Obama’s chief strategists and your cohost on the great podcast, Hacks on Tap.

Misha Zelinsky:

It’s a fantastic podcast, my favorite podcast, everyone should listen. There’s a plug there for you, mate.

Mike Murphy:

Thank you.

Misha Zelinsky:

But how critical is that?

Mike Murphy:

Well, it is a problem. So the ugly little secret is, and this is true in the Congress too. It used to be more true, but it’s still true is behind the food fight, most of them are friends. They get along pretty well. You will see on our television two members of Congress who are in the leadership cast, the top 60 people, they’re fighting on TV, calling each other names, and then you’re be in the Capitol building and they’re both on an elevator talking about, “Hey, you’re going to the barbecue tomorrow? We got a thing for the national association of plastic molding.”

Mike Murphy:

What has happened is there’s nowhere left for them to hide, be friends and get anything done. Part of it is the way our system works, and our house of representatives, we have 435 congressional seats that are normally all quarter million or 200,000 voters, maybe 700,000 people, and they’re all over the country. And there used to be between the most liberal Republican and the most conservative Democrat about 80 seats, kind of there.

Mike Murphy:

And there were about 80 seats that were what we would call swing seats that could go either way, so they had to build a coalition beyond just Republicans or Democrats to win that seat. But then redistricting took over where State legislatures, and governors, it’s a complicated process, but they drew the seats to be safe. So all you care about are your party voters. So now we only have about 20 of those seats and there are only three people between the most liberal Republican, most conserved Democrats.

Mike Murphy:

So it becomes you’re on a team and you don’t have any room to move, and the incentives are to fight. And then you’ve got the cable TV business where we got a channel for every point of view saying, “You’re right, you’re right. They’re terrible.” There was a Congressman, was a minister in Philadelphia who coined a great phrase that I steal all the time, Bill Gray, who said, “The problem is the formula has now become, I’m right, you’re evil.”

Mike Murphy:

And if the other side is evil, you can say anything about them or do anything. You’re a hero, you’re killing the devil. So that corrosiveness has trapped everybody and a lot of them hate it, into this world where it’s all worrying about your primary voters. Because you might have 700,000 people in your district and 195,000 voters, but because it’s a mostly Republican district and you’re going to win 90% of the time, unless something really crazy happens, all you really care about is the 35,000 voters in the primary who are generally driven by interest groups. Same thing on the Democratic side.

Mike Murphy:

I remember California, big Democratic State, used to be a swing State. I was working for Schwarzenegger, we would do the big budget negotiation at the very end of the process. After all the fighting, we’d put everybody in a room, be the governor and the two legislative leaders, the big five, and the Republicans were in the minority. They’d sit there and wonder what was for lunch, and the speaker of the house, the Democratic speaker could not order lunch or move a chair without calling the head of the Teacher’s Union or the head of the State Employee Union.

Mike Murphy:

So Arnold used to say, “Throw him out, get her in.” Because they were so powerful in primaries, you couldn’t buck them. So that has taken the lubrication out of the gears and frozen everything. And it’s bad because we’re teaching people that politics doesn’t solve anything, which means they lose faith in the system, which means they elect drags, they just fight. So it’s a compounding thing that’s really trouble.

Mike Murphy:

I have got one more plugin. When I’m not doing what I normally do, I also spent a lot of time at University of Southern California, USC, the center for the political future with Bob Schrum, who like David Axelrod is a Democrat consultant that I spent a career fighting in campaigns, but we’ve been friends. He’s wrong on everything, he’s got a iHeart Lennon tattoo, but he’s a good guy and he’s a patriot. So you can be opponents but not enemies. That’s the way politics used to work.

Mike Murphy:

Axe and I have a joke, we have run more Iowa governor races against each other, and we would go back and forth. And even though we’re killing each other in the campaign, we’d sneak off and have dinner in some small rural place where nobody would see us. It’s like pro wrestling, I’m the Russian assassin, he’s Captain America, and actually were cousins. But it’s not quite that cynical because he… I’m a conservative and I believe it. One of the reasons I hate Trump is I don’t think he’s a conservative at all, and Axelrod’s a good committed liberal. So we know we disagree on stuff, but we love the system.

Mike Murphy:

Having those relationships too, if a campaign really goes out of whack, you can have a little back channel knowing there’s no mercy in it, but there are rules, and there can be a little back channel to try to keep the thing on the playing field, not out in the stands hurting civilians.

Misha Zelinsky:

Now I just want to turn attention to your side of the show, the Republican Party. You are a very, very prominent Never Trumper, but I want to talk about the future of the Republican Party. Trump was even an outsider. He undertook a hostile takeover of the Republican Party, but it’s very much now fashioned in his image, there is a resistance. But I want to pose it a question to because a lot of people focus on 2020.

Misha Zelinsky:

If Trump wins, is that the end of the Republican Party? And does it have a future if Trump wins the election? Because it is important that mainstream politics does have a mainstream-

Mike Murphy:

Exactly.

Misha Zelinsky:

… conservative party.

Mike Murphy:

Well, that is a great question. So it was a takeover and we’ve gone from being a, I’ll use the Australian example, we’re a small-l liberal party. We believed in free trade, and we believed in the Atlantic Alliance, we were fiscal conservatives, we were classic. Then Trump takes over and all of a sudden it’s Juan Peron. He doesn’t care anything about the budget or entitlements, blows up all the alliances. Runs a racket near criminal behavior with Confederates and people like that as a soft spot for the white supremacist movement, which was long dead. And he just sprinkled a little gasoline on the embers, see what he can do there.

Mike Murphy:

And he’s ruined the Republican brand, and Republican politicians with a few notable exceptions. I’ll give a salute to my old friend and client, Mitt Romney. Pretty much gone cynical and looked the other way, thinking, well, we won, we have power and, or I’m afraid… One Senator told me, “Look, I see you on cable TV screaming about Trump.” This was two years ago. “I would love to do that. I go home, give a fiery speech, he’s a moron. I’ve seen him in the White House, he can’t work at TV remote. The aide has to come do it.

Mike Murphy:

He’s an idiot. And my wife would be so happy, she’d talked to me again. It would be fantastic. And I’d give that fiery speech back in my State. A day later, I’d have a guy in an uncle Sam suit with an aluminum foil hat primarying me, and I’d be only one point ahead, and I probably lose. Then some socialists would take over or some Democrat and I’ve been in the trenches 30 years fighting that and Trump wouldn’t change at all. Trump will just be Trump, so we’re going to wait him out.”

Mike Murphy:

And I said, “Well, what if 10 of you guys came forward?” And he said, “Sign me up. I’m number three, tell me who the first two are.” That has been the problem, but as you say, he’s ruined the brand, and I think if Trump loses, we’re going to have a big civil war over what we are. Do we go back to the liberal party conservatism? Or do we stay in this populous madness? Now, the argument for a reversion to some modernized mean is political parties don’t like losing, and under Trump we’ve been wiped out.

Mike Murphy:

American politics is such a big country, is full of a lot of bullshit because there’s room for commentators, and pollsters, and it’s endless TV show. Guilty, I’m part of it, but most of them haven’t really done campaigns. Like hardheaded businessmen, one thing we know from doing campaigns here on both sides, the operatives know is like Wall Street, we have a thing called mark-to-market. What is it worth today?

Mike Murphy:

You have to sell your factory this week, there’s a price you get. Not going to be maybe the best price or maybe that week it will be, but there’s what it’s worth now. You mark it to market, take an asset, what is it worth today in cash? Not what in 10 years it’ll be worth. Well, in politics, mark-to-market is election day, we count the votes and the polls don’t matter, the predictions don’t matter, it’s just what is.

Mike Murphy:

So when every mark-to-market moments since Trump took the oath of office after being elected, problem part he’s got beat, and we’ve gotten beat either really bad, medium bad, or mediocre. There are no big wins where we would have a special election and a safe Republican seat, and we’d win it by 10 instead of the normal 20. And swing seats would generally gotten our clock cleaned.

Mike Murphy:

We’ve had the biggest wipe out in the Congress since Watergate, we’ve lost nine governorships, and right now we’re on our way to lose in the Senate, which is a shocker because to do that we’re going to have to lose some lean Republican States, and right now the pollings a disaster. Maybe there’ll be a big come back as possible, but it’ll be hanging on by one seat if we do it. So Trump has been anthrax. We are drinking Clorox politically.

Mike Murphy:

When the party regroups after that, I think the biggest We’re going to get tired of winning guy in America” becomes the biggest loser, wiped out our political power. And our legislators are all moving into smaller office and nobody calls them Mr. Chairman anymore. We have had a… One of the stats people don’t look at is since Trump was elected, almost half the serving Republican members of Congress or the Senate have retired or been beaten and left.

Mike Murphy:

So out of that rubble, we either decide this is 1946 and we’re Toyota, and we’re going to need some new modern factories here. Or we go with Trump Jr, or Trump tries again, or a Trump imitator, which will have strength in the party. There are diehards who will… It’s a cult, but I think it’ll be a much more fair fight and Trump will have none of that or lower the big winner who’s going to do anything because there’s going to be very little left.

Mike Murphy:

So my guess is we will lurch in a more normal direction, but the other part of the story is we have to modernize conservatism simply because the demography is against us. It used to be in American politics, ’88, then down to ’82, 80% of the vote was Caucasian and the Republicans won a majority of that vote. This election, we’ll see if we can get to 71% Caucasian. My guess is it’ll be more like 70.

Mike Murphy:

So we’ve been standing still retreating among white voters. Well, nonwhite voters where we can’t get arrested, no surprise, look at the way we act, especially lately have been exploding in size. So we’re in a demographic vice, so we need to modernize conservatives. Now, the good thing is there’s a market. Thank God for the Democrats because the loony left is getting stronger and stronger on their side and over time there’ll be a fatigue there.

Mike Murphy:

And we will have an opportunity to offer quite an alternative, but it’s up to us to figure out what that alternative is going to be.

Misha Zelinsky:

So who are the people to keep an eye out for? Who are the likely leaders of the future in the Republican Party, good and bad?

Mike Murphy:

Well, there’s always a casino game of who’s who and it’s always wrong, but the next generation, I’ll start, there’s former governor, Nikki Haley of South Carolina. She was two term governor there. She was Trump UN ambassador. She escaped the chains of Trump, but she was Trumpy when she had to be. I think she’s the most cynical person I’ve ever dealt with in American politics. So she’s very formidable, but I’d love to sprinkle a little holy water on her and see what happens.

Mike Murphy:

I’m not a big fan because I’ve dealt with her, but she is definitely a contender and again, she’ll make a deal with anybody to get the job. So you got to look at her. And she has been a droid at being right with Trump when it was in her interest and who Trump, huh? Lately. That cynicism may catch up with her, but she is formidable. Then in the Senate, you got a couple of junior Trumps, Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton.

Mike Murphy:

Tom’s a veteran, does the veteran hero, Trumpian thing. I appreciated his service but as politics were demagogic, but hey, there’s some evidence to show there’s a ticket there. Marco Rubio, Senator from Florida is always humming hail to the chief. We’ll see, he ran before. Ben Sasse is a thoughtful conservative. He’s been gutless on Trump, but his other stuff has been very good from Nebraska. Doesn’t have a huge base, but attractive candidate. The Trump sons, particularly Don Jr. He’s openly talking about it, yeah.

Mike Murphy:

One of the problems is, this happened in Hollywood after Arnold got elected. Arnold was funny, a California governor is enough of a big figure. You have security issues, particularly of a super movie star like him. He’d run around Sacramento in a suburban with a chase car, but whenever Arnold was in Hollywood, he’d have them put on the full package two suburban sirens and motorcycle, it was ridiculous just to show his friends.

Mike Murphy:

And next thing you know, Rob Brian is thinking about running for governor, Rob Lowe, it caught on. Well, with Trump, every idiot with yacht is thinking, hey, can be me. So we can have a couple of those guys. And then the latest D.C. bubble, and again, I’ve been around this too long and most of the people, American TV pitches about politics never run a campaign. So I’m a little cynical about the conventional wisdom, but Tucker Carlson, who probably…

Mike Murphy:

I don’t know if he means anything over there, but he’s… Yeah, yeah. You’d know about him, but he’s very glib. He’s a big star on Fox. Old friend of mine before he went crazy. He used to be a respected journalist, but he’s the sharp acid tongue, but clever trumping guy in TV, so there’s a boom right now for Tucker. I think he would never make it and my guess is, he’s making too much money being a TV blowhard, but he’s being mentioned right now.

Mike Murphy:

I would tell my friends in Australia to tune in. I can finally admit it, I used to do a lot of work in Canada. They didn’t talk about it at the time and it was always fun with my Canadian friends. There’s probably a parallel kind of a Commonwealth thing with Australia, but the Canadians would always say, “Well, I’m a federal toy. I’m a provincial social credit voter and I’m an American Democrat.” Because they’d see so much of it, they’d adopt a party to root for it.

Mike Murphy:

So I would say if you like the theater of the absurd and it may… I think it may get better and become hopeful. And if Trump loses as he is likely, but not certain to keep an eye on the Republican primary because there’ll be no end of entertainment.

Misha Zelinsky:

Well, it certainly sounds like good theater, if nothing else. Of course, so for there to be a Republican primary, there’s got to be firstly, a Democratic victory, a Biden presidency. Biden at the moment, you look at the polling, he’s well ahead on national polls, double digit, leads in most national polls, he’s got good single digit leads in all the critical swing States.

Misha Zelinsky:

You’re a strategist, you’re running Biden’s campaign, what’s keeping you up at night right now if you are in charge of that campaign?

Mike Murphy:

That nobody knows Joe Biden. It’s one of these things where they’re way ahead of their supply lines in the polling, and what I mean by that is that the country wants to fire Donald Trump. I’d argued they wanted that since 2017, which is why the Republican Party has taken a beating on every mark-to-market day of elections. Almost everywhere, almost all the time, almost always really bad. So fire Trump is what’s winning the election now, and that’s not uncommon. Generally our presidential elections are a referendum on the incumbent, keep him or lose him.

Mike Murphy:

But at some point in the campaign, they take a look at the challenger. Now, because the coronavirus, Joe’s been locked in his basement doing a few good things, but to political junkies, Biden is well known, has been around forever. To rank and file voters, they don’t know much about them at all other than old guy from D.C. who seems blue collar and seems like a good guy to have a beer with. They don’t know anything else.

Mike Murphy:

The Trump campaign is going to have a couple of hundred million to do what incumbents in trouble always do, which is beat the hell out of him, and that’s coming. And there’s been a lot of worry that the Biden fundraising operation has been anemic. His campaign started with a small staff, can he handle that? Well, the last two months he’s raised more money than Donald Trump, which is a very good sign. So the Biden folks are catching up fast.

Mike Murphy:

But Joe, I know him, I like him. I ideologically, I was for Buttigieg because I know him and I think he… And again, I’m a conservative, so yeah, yeah. All of this is painful for me because I’m probably seeing I’m not with many of them, but I want to get rid of Trump. I’m actually-

Misha Zelinsky:

Well, how much were you freaking out about Bernie Sanders who’s in the lead going to South Carolina and looked like he might win at one point?

Mike Murphy:

Oh God, my worst nightmare come to life. It’s unbelievable. I was on the phone trying to see if we can get a Neil Kinnock look alike to come over in primary. It’d be inch better. So I’m part of Republican voters against Trump, rvat.org if you’re curious and we’re running a big aggressive campaign. So as I like to say, I’m not buying Democrat, I’m leasing for four years to get rid of Trump.

Mike Murphy:

Here’s the Biden problem. Lets look at him, just like a product. So there’s the Iowa caucus. Now it’s a weird election, small turnout, Iowa, but it’s important and it’s the first test. Well, Biden starts 20 points ahead and he gets there because he’s known in the Democratic Party, liked, and all of a sudden there’s competition. So good soybean farmer in Iowa gets to start with Biden, but then, hey, there’s this Buttigieg guy. He’s really impressive.

Mike Murphy:

Wow, I like this Cory Booker, I like Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, a just North of here. And all of a sudden in a competitive market, Biden gets wiped out when people have other choices. And so then he goes to New Hampshire and he gets wiped out again. Well, bad sign. Then he gets to South Carolina, the first contest with a large African American population influential in it, which is true in the Southern Democratic primaries, and because of his connection to Obama, and because of earned affection in that community, and because the most powerful leader in the community was all for him, he wins.

Mike Murphy:

So he’s the turtle upon the fence post. He did not climb up there himself. Now, they then surf forward and beat everybody and came back from the dead, so I give him a big salute. But what that’s telling me is Biden is not a magic candidate, he needs that help. And right now what’s helping him is fire Trump, which I doubt will change. But Biden’s going to go through some bumpy times if they can manage that, particularly the big debates.

Mike Murphy:

Because the Trump campaign slogan has been, Biden’s a sleepy, crazy old man, and Biden’s had some bad moments on the trail. Part of it is Biden is a motor mouth and he gets tangled up and everything. I think Biden is smarter and sharper than Trump by a mile, but perception is reality of judicious editing, you get these moments. So Trump’s going to build that up, and if Biden has a sharp debate, it’ll be destroyed, it will be over.

Mike Murphy:

But if Biden has a bad debate because Joe was too busy calling other old politicians around the country and not going through grilling debate prep for the next five months, and doesn’t take it seriously. And in the past, Joe has not been a very disciplined campaigner. So if Joe can’t get into shape here, he will give Trump an opening.

Mike Murphy:

Now, my guess is, the country will still fire Trump, but let’s remember the Obama example. Obama had bad reelect numbers, not as bad as Trump but bad, and so they went out and they defined my friend Mitt Romney a lot better than Mitt defined himself, and they beat him. And it will be the same strategy for Trump with more ferocity.

Mike Murphy:

The other thing I worry about, and I’m not sending any angry emails to David Axelrod at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, dear listeners, but I’m a hardheaded politician, so I’m talking about the numbers. I worry a little, the Democrats have a fetish for identity. You go to the DNC website… See what we Republicans do and drives them crazy, but we try to pitch one big idea of room for everybody, Make America Great Again, which was originally a Reagan slogan, Shining City on a Hill.

Mike Murphy:

And so we tend to have one big vision whether you like it or not for where we’re going and put everybody in it. The Democrats tend to say, “New Englanders for Biden.” I have a yard sign in my basement where we record the podcast. I collect a lot of this political stuff over the years and I’ve got a native Americans for Al Gore yard sign of a big feather at it.

Mike Murphy:

Now, I have nothing against feathers, I have nothing against… In fact, I’m a fan of native American culture, but you go to the DMC page and it’s African Americans for Biden, Asian Americans… It’s 400 groups. And right now the theory in the conventional wisdom is African American voters are so important. We have to have an African American running mate because we’ve had this moment of awakening about systemic racism.

Mike Murphy:

And I agree with everything, but the African American running mate, why? Because the African American vote is the one thing Biden has. He has tons of it. And what he’s got to worry about are cranky white people who are suspicious of identity politics, and if there’s a racial undercurrent there, I would like to fix it after the election, after you get their damn votes and you have power.

Mike Murphy:

And if we nominate a Kamala Harris or something else to reinforce a vote you already have, you give Trump an opening. And Trump is a racist and a runner racist campaign. So going to the liberal African American left is scary to me. It adds risk to the Biden campaign and I don’t want risk. I want Trump in a box going out of the box of his papers being shoved out of the office. So they have to be careful about that.

Mike Murphy:

The theory is, oh, if you don’t do it, everybody will stay home. Nobody is going to stay home against Trump. Biden has respect in that community. They know his administration will be strongly of color. But pandering to… You see, one of the problems we have American politics now, and the media is bought into this is this narrative that your base voters are swing voters.

Mike Murphy:

No, base voters will vote for a box of horseshoes if it has an R or D on it, but you’ve got to win the election by making your base slightly uncomfortable and reaching out a little bit. And if the Biden people run an all base strategy, then we’re going to be debating Kamala Harris positions like cash reparations for former slaves, which I can tell you in the industrial suburbs where Trump rang the bell in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan is going to be much better for Trump than it is for Biden. So I don’t want to give Trump any of those tools. So I worry about the VP pick.

Mike Murphy:

Nobody in American politics votes for VP. It’s just a big Superbowl for the press, big contest where the voters learned something about the candidate for president based on who he or she picks. This whole election will come down to the suburbs. The Republicans under Trump have lost the suburbs, college educated white women, college educated white independents and males, and if Biden goes hard left or goes too racial, the suburbs are going to start going back to the safety of the GOP.

Mike Murphy:

So my advice to Biden and all these things about winning is take the risk out of it. Pick an Amy Klobuchar, though she took herself out, pick a Gina Raimondo, the governor of Rhode Island. Best democratic governor in the country. Pick a Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, key State, popular, smart, generational change. Pick governor Lujan even in of New Mexico. She’s impressive. But careful, careful, careful, careful with the identity stuff because their best skill is pulling the Democrats who are run by a coastal elite into culture wars.

Mike Murphy:

And in the Midwest, the Dems have lost. Whitmer knows what to do in Michigan, but they’ve lost the ability to really understand a Republican culture war attack. Look at Hillary, I know people in Michigan, well, I grew up around Detroit who on weekends, they’d come up in the auto industry, were making good money as trained machinists, the high skilled blue collar jobs. On weekends are being paid cash to dissemble 40 ton stamping presses and put them on freight cars to Mexico.

Mike Murphy:

And most of them are Democrats and they are listening to Hillary Clinton talk about gender rights and bathrooms. Now gender rights and bathroom are important, but if you’re a 52-year old auto worker who’s never going to learn how to code and you’re watching the machine your dad worked at and it gave you a middle class life being taken down into parts and putting on a freight car to Mexico, you got other problems.

Mike Murphy:

The Democrat, they don’t need to win that vote, but they need to be competitive there, and I’m worried their identity fetish, sorry, for the long answer, will steer them into a place where Trump will have a good September. That said, I think Joe wins. If I had to bet, I bet on Joe definitely.

Misha Zelinsky:

Well, personally, I have a rule to never bet on elections ever again after the 2016 presidential election. Those who know me will understand why. I just want to switch gears a little. We’ve talked a lot about the current presidency, the upcoming election, talk about some previous elections and candidates you worked for and a little bit of politics in the pub, a bit of Ali versus Tyson.

Misha Zelinsky:

We talked about Schwarzenegger, but you worked for John McCain who’s a legendary Republican Senator, presidential candidate. The 2000 campaign that he lost to George Bush, do you think the Republican Party, do you think the world would have been different had McCain won that one?

Mike Murphy:

Oh sure. Yeah. We’ve got hacks at the pub here. I like it. Number one beer in Australia, Fosters?

Misha Zelinsky:

Mate, definitely not a Fosters. It’s actually an export beer. Nobody in Australia drinks Fosters, believe it or not.

Mike Murphy:

What’s the best one? What do I order when I’m there?

Misha Zelinsky:

Let’s go with the VB, mate.

Mike Murphy:

I see the advertising. That’s why I asked you. I didn’t want to go with the line, “Hand me a Fosters.” Got that. I’ll bet I’ll be wrong.

Mike Murphy:

Yeah. Well, if John had won the nomination, I worked a lot in 2000 with him. He was an amazing character, I’m very fond of him. We had an incredible time because it was a pure insurgency. We got to sneak around, blowing up bridges and everything. Then if they had called our bluff and actually made us the nominee, it would have been a bumpy general election candidate because McCain was always ready to get into a good fight with a third of his own party.

Mike Murphy:

But had we won, I think McCain would have been a great reformer in the Teddy Roosevelt tradition and it would have reclocked things a bit. It would have been bumpy, but it would have been, let’s put, I’m from Los Angeles, I also worked in show business, a writer and producer, and there’s a great old line about Jack Warner who built Warner brothers studio with his brother. And Jack was a very crusty guy.

Mike Murphy:

Albert Einstein once came to the studio and he said, “Hey Jack, this is Professor Einstein. He wrote the theory of relativity in Oregon city.” Warner said, “I got a theory too about relatives, don’t go into business with them.” Because he was always fighting his brother. But anyway, they asked him how hard it was to run a big movie studio in the golden age and he said, “Well, you got to make a choice. I don’t get heart attacks, I give them.”

Mike Murphy:

And McCain would have given a lot of heart attacks. He would have been on offense all the time. And I think he would have been a great president. I think he really would have. Then we would have had the bad second term probably and wouldn’t have been as good. But I think the party had become so corrupted by just keeping the perpetual power machine in D.C. And this stunned me, I thought most of the hacks would go wrong, but I know a lot of these Senators, I’ve worked for a bunch of them and Congressmen.

Mike Murphy:

I thought there’d be more pushback, and as you said, other than the Russian stuff, sanctions, a few things like that, occasionally China and a lot of eye rolling at the North Korea policy, there hasn’t been, they’ve been gutless. It’s funny, they get a federal paycheck, but it’s not like we’re asking them to land on Anzio Beach and get shot. We’re just asking them to give up Senate haircuts for two bucks if they lose a primary.

Mike Murphy:

But apparently, and that shook me. And my guess is the Democrats have so tested might be just as bad. It’s been very easy to be a Democrat because you get a free halo from Trump and you can say, “Oh, he’s horrible. He’s horrible.” And it’s not morally equivalent, but when Clinton was misbehaving in the White House and lying to the camera about it, all the strong feminist of the Democratic Party found comfort in silence.

Mike Murphy:

So it has scared me about the fines and patriotism of the kind of people we elect to Congress because I’m proud the Democrats have been tough on Trump, but it’s been easy. There’s no cost in it for them, it’s a winner.

Misha Zelinsky:

Now, Mike, I could of course go on all day picking your brain on these topics, but it’s time for the [inaudible 00:53:40] fun part of the show where I do my trademark clunky segue from heavy foreign policy to talk to light chat. Now, of course, you’re an avid fan of Diplomates, so you know these questions coming your way, Mike.

Mike Murphy:

I have it on my subscription list, so I promise you, I will.

Misha Zelinsky:

Well, you’ve got to listen to this episode at least, mate. So that’s great because there’ll be two listeners, you and my mind. So barbecue at Mike Murphy’s, who are the three Aussies coming along and why?

Mike Murphy:

Oh, well, I’d love to meet an Australian prime minister, Mr. Morrison of the Liberal Party, would be interesting. And I’m also curious about all the nutty intrigue and all that.

Misha Zelinsky:

Oh you mean the [KU capital 00:54:25]?

Mike Murphy:

Yeah, yeah. No, no. It’s Game of Thrones down there, so I’m curious about that. Maybe I’d also invite opponent and watch them circle each other, but I want it to be a fun barbecue. I would call my wonderful friend of mine, we did for years named [Judof 00:54:42], who’s from Melbourne, grew up there. Not there now, she’s in New York, but she used to tell me great stories about various characters, so I give her one person to pick because I’ve heard all the names, but I’m going to get it wrong right now.

Mike Murphy:

I would probably do that, and boy, Australia in so many ways punches way above its weight and there are some tremendous film directors and actors that have come out of there. And based on my Hollywood life, I’d drag Sam Neill in, or maybe Hines, or one of the great Australian artists. There’s a lot. It would be a tough call, but probably somebody Judof would recommend to amaze me of her knowledge. Morrison or even a former prime minister, but somebody from the Liberal Part on right just because I’m curious about all the madness.

Mike Murphy:

And one of your leading film people, probably… We’ll start with Sam Neill just because he’s a truly great actor and he’s had an amazing career than any other stars.

Misha Zelinsky:

I’m laughing Mike because you’ve stumbled into one of the great Australian ripoffs, which is that anyone who becomes famous from New Zealand globally immediately become stolen as an Australian citizen. So Sam Neill, believe it or not, is actually Kiwi, so you’ve gone and made unwittingly a host of enemies in New Zealand and I’ve got a huge following the on this show in New Zealand. So there you go, mate, enemies for life all over the shaky isles.

Mike Murphy:

You guys should just invade and solve that thing. I understand they don’t have an army, it wouldn’t take long. I don’t know how many Americans, they probably always say Paul Hogan, and I was definitely not going to go there.

Misha Zelinsky:

Crocodile Dundee obviously, mate-

Mike Murphy:

Exactly.

Misha Zelinsky:

… or another Kiwi, Russell Crowe.

Mike Murphy:

Oh, I didn’t know that. I bumped into him once. I bumped into this guy and he turned around and I thought one, sorry… And he was nice. Sorry for bumping in and two, well, you’re not 6/4 like our movie stars. It was at The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, long story. But anyway, Crowe would be… Guy Pearce is a tremendous actor. He would be high on my list. There’s an Australian television show I love where he’s a down and out lawyer detective.

Mike Murphy:

It airs here like two years later and it’s perfectly made, and it’s a great cast of Australian character actors. Use box office. Well, can I wrap up with a few plugs here real quick?

Mike Murphy:

Republican voters against Trump, we are doing a lot of cool vicious anti-Trump ads and stuff, so you got to check us out at our rvat, R-V-A-T.org. One of the things we’re doing is we’re having real Republicans just get online and do an ad into the camera. Very grassroots, we’ve done over 350 of them, and then we air them digitally in the key five States. And we got big news coming.

Mike Murphy:

In fact, appreciate this as a poll. We just did a dirty trick. We took a poll of Jacksonville, Florida, Duvall County, lean Republican, but an important County where Trump wants to have the convention. We found out they don’t want it. They don’t want to COVID convention. So we’re throwing a lot of bombs there, and if you’re curious about what’s going on in Republican civil war, they’re a good place to go.

Mike Murphy:

And then of course, Hacks on Tap and Radio Free GOP. We just did a special episode with Bill Kristol and a bunch of the other leaders of RVAT talking about our strategy. So when you listen to every Diplomate podcast twice, and after you’ve memorized it, and you want another one, check out one of those and hopefully you enjoy it.

Misha Zelinsky:

Of course, mate, I love Hacks on Tap and I encourage everyone to listen in, it’s fantastic show. And check out Radio GOP. There you go, I’m the Republican ads, mate. Just one supplementary question, if I could just.

Mike Murphy:

Yeah, of course.

Misha Zelinsky:

You’ve talked a bit about Never Trumping, what should people be doing if they are Republican in this election? Should they be voting for Biden? Should they stay at home? Should they split their ticket? What would you say to those people in this election?

Mike Murphy:

My argument is vote Biden. He’s not that bad, that’s my powerful slogan. I got to stop Trump, so participate but vote Biden. If he can’t stand that, participate, but skip, just don’t vote in the presidential. Or write in Ronald Reagan, nothing wrong with that. Write in John McCain. Write in Mitt Romney, write in whoever you believe in. So vote for president you want not the one you endure.

Mike Murphy:

But I encourage people to vote and down the ticket I’m really… This is the big fight in the Never Trump movement. Should we throw out the Republican Senate in-house to punish them for what they’ve done with Trump or is it still okay to vote for a gutless Republican Senator? And I’m really torn on this. I’m leaning toward, it’s still okay to vote for a gutless Republican Senator. I have a complicated argument which I’ll try to do very quickly.

Mike Murphy:

Biden’s big superpower in the Senate was he was the only guy on the Democratic side who could make a deal through Republicans because they trust him. He could go into a room with Mitch McConnell and they’d have a hell of a battle, but they respect each other, he’d come out with something. If the Democrats win the Senate, and the house, and the Biden presidency, Joe’s going to find himself boxed in by the left and Joe’s center is Democrat.

Mike Murphy:

And he’s going to be a little less powerful and ideologically a little more in the corner than he’s going to want to be, yet the Republicans still hold onto the Senate by a vote and have the majority there, and the Democrats have the house, which they will have. Then Biden’s got something to work with. He’s got a little counterforce where you can say, “I’m the only guy who can get this out of McConnell. I’m not going to be able to get your AOC agenda from the hard left, but I can get this, that, and the other thing I’ll trade them for that.”

Mike Murphy:

And the Republicans on the other hand will be hanging on by one vote and terrified and ready to deal. So there’s from Biden’s personal point of view, having a narrow one vote Senate lead, Biden’s got more power to operate. And ideologically would be a more centrist outcome than totally turning over the world to the Ds, where the Republicans in the Senate will just go into flame throwing opposition mode like a bunch of house guys.

Mike Murphy:

Will make the job of rebuilding the party harder too. So I’m for the one vote edge in the Senate, as mad as I am at him and I’m still working that through. So whatever it is, I tell everybody to vote. Don’t stay home, it a democracy. Do your duty.

Misha Zelinsky:

Do your duty, what a hopeful place in this conversation. Mike Murphy, thanks so much for coming on the show. It’s been fantastic.

Mike Murphy:

Thank you, Misha. Anytime. Take care. Let me know if you’re ever in the U.S.

Misha Zelinsky:

Hopefully not too far away. Cheers, mate. Take care.

Mike Murphy:

See you.

Misha Zelinsky:

Hey, everyone, before you go, a little bit of homework. Mike mentioned Hacks on Tap quite a bit. It’s fantastic podcast, so I encourage you to jump on, listen, subscribe. It’s one of the best U.S. and general political podcasts going around with some legendary and political analysts on there. And as ever, if you did enjoy the episode, jump on iTunes or your podcasting app, rate, review, and subscribe to the show, it helps get the word out there.

Misha Zelinsky:

I hope you’ve enjoyed the episode and see you next time.

Speaker 2:

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Speaker 1:

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