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Melissa Harris-Perry: You're listening to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. President Joe Biden is ready for round two.
President Joe Biden: The question we're facing is whether in the years ahead, we have more freedom or less freedom, more rights are fewer. I know what I want the answer to be and I think you do too. This is not a time to be complacent. That's why I'm running for re-election.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Joining me now is Joel Payne, CBS News political contributor and Chief Communications Officer for Move On. Joel, always good to have you join us on The Takeaway. Thanks for coming.
Joel Payne: Melissa, it's so good to talk to you.
Melissa Harris-Perry: All right. Four years ago today, President Biden talked about the soul of the nation being at stake. What is the basis this time for President Biden running for re-election?
Joel Payne: Well, if you and your listeners listened to the first words that come out of President Biden's mouth in the video that his campaign released, it's the word freedom. I think that that is a good rejoinder for how you would cap up this moment, this moment where Joe Biden is talking about his work, the values that he's brought to the White House, to the job, and also the challenges that face America right now, in particularly the coalition of voters that are relying on him.
I also think it's an interesting continuation of what Biden talked about four years ago, about Charlottesville and about what happened there, and about how he needs to continue the fight going forward. I think it's a pretty significant, again, rejoinder and a bookend on the last four years and how Joe Biden would sum up his impact on America and it's the fight for freedom, and it's the fight for leveling the playing field.
Melissa Harris-Perry: 25 years ago, if we were talking about a Joe Biden campaign, we would talk about retail politics, his extraordinary capacity to connect with people in these ways, but when he ran in 2020, because we were at the height of the pandemic, Joe Biden didn't run a typical Biden campaign. He couldn't be pressing the flesh when we were dealing with a deadly global pandemic. What will we see from an 80-year-old President Biden running for re-election in what is going to be a bit more of a normal in the sense of no pandemic campaign season?
Joel Payne: There was nothing typical about 2020, both as living as a human and also running for office, and there's nothing typical about Joe Biden or his ascent to the presidency, his age, his place and the larger macro-democratic politics, his journey, frankly, which was not a common one. Yes, he was a former vice president, but he entered the race with the highest name ID, but really had to work to come up with a message that could bring together the Democratic coalition.
I don't think it's going to be typical. Yes, he is at advanced age. I've heard a lot of talk about that. That is a common thing that people like to focus on when they're summing up, "Okay, well, how's Joe Biden going to run for re-election?" I just don't think it's a new piece of data, Melissa. If it was, if we woke up today and was like, "Oh my gosh, Joe Biden is 80 years old," that'd be one thing. We elected Joe Biden as a 77-year-old man so I think we knew what we were getting. We understood the advantages and the disadvantages of that, and I think it has not affected his job negatively.
He has not been less vigorous. He has not been less impactful or less committed to the promises he made because of his age. I actually don't think that's a concern. I don't think that's a worry. I think what Joe Biden has actually done has probably been one of the most successful coalition presidents we've ever seen.
He's been able to hold together a pretty tough coalition of nervous never-Trumpers, of people in the middle, of independents, of young voters, of African Americans, of Latinos, of women college-educated voters. It is a very tricky interesting coalition that is not going to show up well by the way, in public opinion polls, but it's been reliable. It was there for him in 2020. It was there for him in 2022 in the midterms, he and his allies, and I think he thinks it'll be there for him again in 2024. I think there's no information to suggest that it won't.
Melissa Harris-Perry: We're taking a quick break right here. More on The Takeaway right after this.
You're still with The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and I'm talking with Joel Payne about President Biden's announcement today that he's running for re-election in 2024. All right, Joel, you were walking us through this Biden coalition, and I guess I'm wondering if there is coalition-building value in a good robust primary. We know that we've got two other Democratic challengers right now, RFK Jr. and Marianne Williamson, but neither of them are really quite, if we're going back for example to 2008, and we look at that robust primary that ultimately led to Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton as the final two candidates.
So far, nothing like that against this incumbent president but I wonder if there's value in that because that 2008 slug fest, also brought out a lot of Democrats and gave them a lot of stake throughout both the primary and then into the generals.
Joel Payne: You'll never get me to speak against the value of a good primary. I'm a big believer in it, by the way, I've said it. I think if you look at the, maybe the last couple of successful presidents, they've all come from very difficult competitive primaries. Barack Obama had to work in a primary. Donald Trump, say what you want to say, had to work in a primary, and Joe Biden had to work in a primary in a very different scenario than we're in right now. I think Joe Biden has demonstrated he can do the job, he will do the job.
I don't quite see the value of a primary here, but generally, I think primaries are a good idea. I think what's different about this moment is you have a coalition that's very settled on, "This is our leader. This is our intentional leader who understands what we want from him and who understands how to deliver, and he's proven he can deliver," so I don't think there's a case for an alternative. Obviously, there are factors to consider Joe Biden's age, other contenders who might be waiting for Joe Biden to exit stage left, but he's not ready to exit stage left, and I don't think the American people are ready for him to exit stage left.
Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm also wondering about-- so I'm with you. I actually think that 80 today is certainly not what 80 was and hopefully, any of us will be 80 as well as Joe Biden is being 80, but I guess I am interested in part what happens in the primary on the other side.
In the last election cycle in 2020, it was one old white guy or another old white guy, just quite frankly. If it ends up not being Trump on the Republican side, if it's a younger woman, for example, like Nikki Haley, or if we get a Southern governor like a Greg Abbott, or Ron DeSantis who can bring a different coalition, does that change the calculus, not so much for Democrats, but for those, as you said, nervous never Trumpers who are also part of the Biden coalition?
Joel Payne: I think certainly if you look at the Republican, let's call it coalition or the potential Republican coalition, I think the math probably does change if it's not Donald Trump there. I also think that Republicans think that Donald Trump brings out their base and brings out certain parts of their electorate that maybe other candidates wouldn't. I think politics is all about styles make fights. I'm a big boxing fan and I remember my dad and my uncles used to tell me styles make fights, and I think about that a lot with politics.
Biden-Trump, we know what this matchup is. We know how those two political figures, both complement each other and also contrast each other and how their coalitions complement and contrast each other’s. I don't think there is anything that will be all that different if it is Biden and Trump again from what we saw in 2020. Obviously, the circumstances are different. COVID won't be at the backdrop of the campaign like it was four years ago. It'll be a campaign where Joe Biden will be trying to make it a contrast campaign about, “Don't judge me against the Almighty. Judge me against the alternative. Look at what this guy did when he was president. Look at how he destroyed our democracy. Look at what he has wrought in our politics.”
Donald Trump is going to be telling a different vision, maybe some bastardized version of American carnage. I think it'll be a matter of who can win that narrative battle, but we've seen it before and I think we know how those folks match up with each other.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Are Democrats too focused on the White House? After all, Democrats hold the White House right now and yet, Roe v. Wade was overturned, there are legislative battles occurring in the states where Republican and conservative lawmakers seem to be winning those battles over and over. Of course, that kill switch of the US Senate is just a matter of one or two seats flipping. I guess I'm just wondering, does it even matter who occupies the White House?
Joel Payne: Oh, for sure it does. It matters when you look at who's on the Supreme Court. Look, if Democrats had been successful in 2016- -we probably wouldn't be having the conversations we're having about Mifepristone and about Dobbs. We probably would not be having conversations about other consequential Supreme Court rulings. We also, frankly, I think, would not have gone through the last five years of trauma that the country went through. I think it definitely matters who's in the White House.
It is not singularly important. It's important in context of a larger effort to build a Democratic trifecta. I can tell you a lot of the Democrats that I talk to and the folks who I rely on the opinion of. They are focused on building out that trifecta so that if we can send Joe Biden back to the White House, and I say that from the perspective of a Democrat, he has a full trifecta and an operational trifecta. Not a Manchin-Sinema trifecta, but an operational trifecta where he can proactively finish the job as he says in his campaign video today.
Melissa Harris-Perry: I am not going to stop laughing about a Manchin-Sinema trifecta. Joel Payne is CBS News political contributor and Chief Communications Officer for Move On. Joel, as always, we love having you with us on The Takeaway.
Joel Payne: It's so good to be with you. Thank you.
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