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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Here's how the presidential campaign is ending in COVID terms. For the week ending Saturday, the last day of October there were an average of 814 COVID deaths in the United States per day according to The New York Times' COVID tracker. 814 deaths on average per day, last week, so times seven, that's close to 6,000 Americans who died last week alone from the disease. For the last week of September, going back a month, it was 718 deaths on average per day. Over the last month, the average number of Americans who die every day from COVID has increased by about 100 deaths a day, 100 more deaths every day.

Then, at the same time, a month ago. It would make sense also with the number of cases rising by about the same percentage in recent weeks, it takes about a month for most people who die from COVID to succumb. 814 deaths per day on average last week, up 100 people a day from a month ago, consistent with the percentage rise in the number of cases. This is how Donald Trump Jr. was ending the campaign for his father on the Laura Ingraham show on Fox the other day.

Donald Trump Jr.: I was like, why aren't they talking about this? Oh, oh, because the number is almost nothing.

Brian: It wasn't just a one-off from Don Jr. being hardcore on a hardcore show. Trump campaign senior advisor Jason Miller said the same false thing yesterday on ABC this week with George Stephanopoulos.

Jason Miller: COVID is no longer a death sentence for virtually everybody who gets it. We have made such miraculous advancements in such a short amount of time.

Brian: As the daily death count rises past 800, call it 5600, 5700, 5800 Americans dying per week, the Trump campaign is closing on the claim that the number is almost nothing per Donald Trump Jr., not a death sentence for virtually everyone who gets it per campaign adviser, Jason Miller. Do the claims in the numbers matter politically? With me now on that and more, Amy Walter, national editor of The Cook Political Report, and as many of you know, host of The Takeaway's Friday edition, Friday Politics with Amy Walter here on WNYC. Hi, Amy. Thanks for doing this show today. I'm sure your brain and your calendar are extremely occupied. Thanks and welcome back.

Amy Walter: Thanks, Brian. Great to be with you.

Brian: Does that kind of campaigning, never mind that it's just false, work?

Amy: Brian, one of the most remarkable things about this moment that we're living through, as we all know is how polarized we are and how things that in another era wouldn't have been considered "political," wearing a mask, believing that we're in a health pandemic, believing that what the scientists are telling us are the actual facts, but now we live at a time when those things are incredibly political.

If you look at, for example, the last Pew poll about how voters across the country feel about COVID, how serious it is, you understand why Jason Miller and Don Jr. and the President are saying it's not a big deal. 66% of Republicans in that Pew poll said that they thought that the worries about COVID were being overblown. Now, only about 30% or a little less or maybe a little bit more than that, of all voters, believed that.

If your bubble, which is the bubble in which the Trump campaign has been in really since 2016, that it's all about the base, the base, the base, then yes, they do believe that's actually the case. They are speaking what they hear around them constantly, which is, people are making a much bigger deal of it. Now, it's also fair to say it is good that people are not dying at the rate they were earlier in this pandemic, that hospitals have gotten better, the science has gotten better, the doctors have gotten better at turning this from what was something that was-

Brian: A death sentence from work, a larger percentage of people, yes.

Amy: -incredibly lethal and a death sentence. Yes, absolutely. That is also true, but to suggest that it's over, and we've turned a corner, it's just blatantly false.

Brian: Even Boris Johnson is largely locking down the UK again with their new spike. Boris Johnson. Is this alternative reality that these alternative facts suppose to convey here in the US to the older whiter voters he wants, suppose to get him to turn out for him tomorrow for Donald Trump? Even the numbers that you just gave me, 66% of Republicans say that COVID is being overblown. That would mean a third of Republicans don't think COVID is being overblown, and I don't think that's a good number for him.

Amy: That's right. That's really what it comes down to at the end. Which is, to double and triple down of a core base. A message that is appealing to a subset of voters is not a way to win an election, but this is the way in which the then candidate Trump campaigned in 2016, it's the way he has governed in his tenure as president. It's how he's closing out his campaign. This belief that there is this silent majority that while the data suggests, it's not a majority of Americans who believe these things or want to see these things or who like this president, they're out there, but he also knows they're out there in certain parts of the country, nationally no, but dig in to some of these states in the Midwest and you could have success.

Brian: There were also studies from Stanford and Johns Hopkins now estimating or extrapolating COVID cases and deaths count from these big in person Trump rallies. Stanford says 30,000 cases, more than 100 deaths, often not of the people who were the attendees at the crowded largely maskless Trump rallies, but people they then spread it too. I don't know how history will remember this rally jag, and I don't really know how the election will either, maybe it's just all happening too late for it to matter numerically.

Amy: I think it's had an impact, as you pointed out, Brian, if you have a third of Republicans who do believe this is serious, if you see the support now that Joe Biden is getting from older voters, I do think that a lot of it was already baked in

before the COVID pandemic. I do think that just opinions about the president and the way he governs the divisiveness and just the berating and the tweeting and all of that, I think that has frustrated them for a while now, and that COVID was an extension of that, the way he handled that.

Look, if you are under the belief as the Trump campaign is, that everything about 2016 can be replicated exactly the same way in 2020, then that's how you're going to close out your campaign. You remember, I'm going to go do this barnstorming campaign. I'm going to rally my voters because people are underestimating them. I'm going to run with the same message. They're out to get me, "they" meaning the media, nobody appreciates who the real Americans are. At the end of the day, we're going show them. It is a very different moment that we're in right now than the one we were in 2016.

Brian: Yes, it's extremely energetic. This blitz of rallies that Trump has been holding recently, and obviously intended to rally a lot of voters like they did help to do in 2016. What's the calculation of this or behind this? Why would it matter to the country where people have largely made up their minds? We're talking about these last few days before Election Day, whether he appears in a lot of places with in-person crowds.

Amy: Yes. There are two things, Brian, that I think are so important about this campaign. Again, the difference from 2016. The president, I don't know if this was a calculation or not, or this is just how he was feeling, but this decision to go all in against absentee and mail-in voting, once again, polarized something and politicize something that was never political before, whether you voted early or whether you voted in person. What that meant then was that Democrats became early voters, and Republicans are now almost 100% dependent on having really strong Election Day turnout, which means that yes, you do need to rally people to the polls at the end.

Now, the reason that most campaigns want to have as many people voting early as possible, it's just more efficient, right? If you know who your universe of voters are, you want to get as many of those folks' votes in the bank so you don't have to worry about. Oh my gosh. I'm sorry, I couldn't get to the polls on Election Day because the dog died, or somebody got sick, or I fell down the- whatever it is, people don't vote even when they completely intend to.

If you can get that vote in the bank, and then you spend the last three weeks or two weeks of the campaign, just focusing on people you know who haven't voted, that's a much better use of your resources. What the Trump campaign is doing essentially is saying, "We're going to just barnstorm to get people super excited the two days or three days or the day before an election to make sure they show up and vote."

That's like walking on a tight rope without a net behind you, right? If that goes wrong, there's nothing underneath you. There are none of those votes that you have already set up. It's also counting on Democrats to not show up on Election Day, which, I think, if we noticed anything from the enthusiasm we're seeing in this early vote, I think Democrats are also going to turn up on Election Day. There won't be as big a

percent of the electorate, but I don't think they're going to stay home.

Brian: All right. Listeners, we've been talking so far with Amy Walter, senior editor for The Cook Political Report, and of course, host of the Friday edition of The Takeaway here on WNYC about COVID and the rallies down the stretch here. We're going to do some state by state, which Amy knows so well, when we come back from a break. If you have any questions or if you want to put on your own pundit hat listener, feel free regarding any state in the presidential election, or even in some of the Senate races, 646 435-7280, 646-435-7280, as we continue with Amy Walter here on WNYC.

Brian Lehrer on WNYC with Amy Walter from The Takeaway and The Cook Political Report. By the way, I want to say thank you, I think, to a listener who goes as Losho or L-O-S-H-O on Instagram. She went as me on Halloween. There's a photo on her Instagram page. That's how you know you've made it, I guess, someone who doesn't know you goes you as you on Halloween. "Let's just say I won't plan to use that as my publicity photo, but yes, you nailed me. Ha ha ha and thanks," Losho, or however you say that, thanks very much for the thought. Amy, has anybody ever gone as you on Halloween that you know of?

Amy: No. Gosh, that's a really making it, Brian. Forget about anything else that could happen in your life, being bronzed or statue of you, somebody going as you as Halloween is high praise. Really high praise.

Brian: At least it was affectionately, it wasn't mockingly. Maybe next year-

Amy: Yes, that's what you think. [laughs]

Brian: -someone will go, ripping, "Oh, that Brian Lehrer, I'm going to go and, oh, look at that." Anyway, I want to play another clip of Jason Miller, senior campaign advisor to the Trump campaign with ABC this week with George Stephanopoulos yesterday. This is still related to COVID, but how he was trying to spin, what's going to happen to the democratic vote as a result?

Jason: I think that I would point out here that I think is really going to backfire on Democrats and many in the media is the Democrats have spent so many months telling folks that it's not safe to go out and vote in person on Tuesday. There's been so much media pressure effectively putting out scare tactics to keep folks away. Guess what, President Trump's supporters are going to show up on Tuesday, nothing is going to stop them.

This is really going to be a vote suppression effort against Democratic voters, and I think Democrats are going to look in the rear-view mirror and say, "This is probably what costs us the election."

Brian: You think there's anything to that, or what would your analysis be of why he would say that? You could see it in theory, if Democrats are the ones pushing, be scared of COVID, obviously people have the option of mailing in ballots around the country this year, but could it actually depress the democratic vote in the long run rather than enhance it?

Amy: I was having a really hard time following the logic of that, Brian, honestly, but it's just this Trump campaign trying to have it both ways, which is, "We can't trust the mailing vote or absentee votes because there's all this fraud and we have all these examples of people doing terrible things with absentee ballot. Oh, also, Democrats are trying to suppress voters by saying they shouldn't show up at the polls because it's--" Look, I think this is not a great sign for a campaign, that the message coming out from Miller the weekend before the election was basically all about how- sort of pre-spinning a loss.

The ways in which Republicans are going to be able to take to the courts or are going to be able to game the system to prove that this election was done with-- There were nefarious methods or illegal activity taking place. That's not exactly a positive theme or message going into the day before an election. It really is sort of setting up for, "Here's our rationale as the election that goes on for how we are going to couch what's happening, which is, it's not our fault. It's the media or it's Democrats."

Brian: Here's a question from a listener via Twitter, listener Lisa asks, "Ask Amy Walker about Pennsylvania. People are freaking out that ballots are being returned, and a lot of households have not been canvased." I'm not exactly sure what that means about not being canvased, but what would you say about that or anything else from what some people think will be the Florida of this year, Pennsylvania?

Amy: Yes, let me just say, and I agree with Lisa that people are freaking out about Pennsylvania, one thing I'll say, and we did a lot of reporting on this for the Politics with Amy Walter show, we talked to a lot of election officials across the country, and the biggest takeaway from all of that was every one of these election officials has been preparing for life with COVID and what that's going to mean in their state for getting ballots to people and the process and all of this.

They are very- it doesn't mean that mistakes aren't going to happen, but it does mean that they are incredibly well-prepared and have been thinking through lots of different scenarios to avoid these sorts of things from happening, or like we saw, for example, in the primaries. The biggest challenge, I think, for Pennsylvania is in the way that legally they aren't allowed to start counting absentee ballots, right? They're not allowed to even process them. You can't open the envelope that they're in until the morning of the election.

There are just simply too many ballots that are going to be- that have come in and that are going to need to be processed, to be able for many of these counties to count both Election Day and early vote on the day of the election. We've already seen a couple of counties in the states saying, "We aren't going to start the early vote counts until Wednesday. Tuesday's going to be all about what happens in the vote on that day."

What that does set up for is some confusion, theoretically, right? How can it be that I was watching the news and it said that Donald Trump had X number of votes and Biden had this number and now I wake up and on Wednesday, it has changed

completely, how is that possible? That's how that's possible, because so much of the vote that's going to be coming in on election night is going to be Republican.

So much of the vote that needs to be counted and processed, and in some of these counties won't be processed until Wednesday, is going to be Democratic leaning. I think when people talk about the nightmare scenario it's that it's midnight. We don't have a clear path for either Trump or Biden in the states that have been called, but it is critical to whoever wins. It's Pennsylvania that will be the decider, and that we could have to wait four weeks, maybe not weeks. We'd have to wait for days to get the final count. It will not be weeks, but in that intervening time, a whole lot of misinformation is going to be put out. I think we will see a lot of legal action also put forward.

Brian: Joe in Bayside. John, WNYC with Amy Walter. Hi, Joe.

Joe: Hi, thank you, Brian. Good morning to you, Ms. Walter.

Amy: Hi.

Joe: I have to start by saying that my wife and I enjoy your spot on the PBS NewsHour every Monday with-

Amy: Thank you.

Joe: -Tamara Keith, you always make a point of checking that out. Regarding that, about a month ago, your spot was proceeded by an interview with two African-American gentlemen, a grandfather and a grandson. I remember the grandfather saying that he believed that the African-American vote got Obama elected.

The lack of a large enough African-American turnout was contributed to Hillary's losing. He predicted that it was going to be a large African-American turnout. It's going to win this for Biden. I'm no expert, but I'd have to agree with him that their turn out would be important, especially if you look at what happened with Biden in South Carolina. My question is, do you have any numbers, polling statistics regarding a potential African-American voter turnout, especially in swing states?

Amy: Yes, it's a really good question and really important one. There's no doubt that not only does the Biden campaign see this as critical, but you're seeing the Trump campaign also spend a lot of their effort on trying to woo African-American voters, specifically African-American men into their camp. I think what we're going to probably see is much better turnout, at least what we've been seeing in the early data, what we're hearing from democratic strategist is that their expectation is, African-American turnout is going to be better than it was for Democrats say in 2016, but probably not as good as it was in 2012.

Remember, in 2012, African-American voters turned out at a higher percent than white voters did. In other words, as a percent of that people who are eligible to vote, that's like, I don't think you can hit that again. I think the one thing that I always go back to is this, that every candidate has his or her own coalition.

Nobody can replay the Obama coalition except for Obama. It's going to be really challenging for other Republicans who think, "Oh, I can do the Trump coalition." Let's see, let's see how well you can do that if your name's not Donald Trump, right? Every candidate has to have that. Biden's coalition is much more suburban, older and has more independent voters than Obama did or Clinton did. African-American voters will be key, but he also has the benefit of having different kinds of voters in his camp right now than either one of the previous democratic nominees.

Brian: Joe, thanks for calling.

Joe: Thank you.

Brian: I'm glad you're an Amy Walter fan. Joe, next year on Halloween, will you go as Amy, Walter?

Joe: Maybe I can talk my wife into doing this.

Brian: Okay. Thank you very much. As we start to run out of time, Amy, give me one state not named Pennsylvania that people should watch really closely tomorrow night.

Amy: Brian, as I was talking to you, I was just going through our final list here, the political report and looking through when the states are closing and what indication that could give, Georgia is a state that closes early, at least for us on the East Coast, it closes at 7:00 PM. That means that we can have some, potentially, idea of who won that state by a decent time. They called in 2016, Georgia was called at 11:30 by the AP. Where that state goes, both for the Senate-- Could Democrats pull out a Senate win there that would be a huge deal?

Brian: Or two, there's two, both of US senators [unintelligible 00:24:56]

Amy: There's two, one of them is definitely going to a runoff. There are 21 candidates. No one's going to hit 50% in that, but the other one could also go to a runoff. You have to get 50% of the vote or else you go to a runoff, but if John Ossoff, the Democrat, is able to beat the current incumbent David Perdue, the Republican, that's a very good sign that Democrats will win the majority in the Senate.

If Biden wins Georgia, or even if the- yes, if Biden wins Georgia, I think that portends a very good night for Biden. If Trump wins Georgia, it means that this is going to be a closer race. It's not a blowout, but it's not going to tell us necessarily who's going to win. Watch Georgia and watch Florida. Those are two, and they're both seven to eight o'clock poll closing time.

Brian: North Carolina too, I would put in that bucket.

Amy: And North Carolina, exactly. [unintelligible 00:25:59]

Brian: Just say that the-- As I understand it, confirm if you think this is really the case, the scenario that you were describing earlier for some states where it will look

like Biden is ahead- I'm sorry, where it will look like Trump won because the Election Day vote is counted first, and then eventually the absentee ballots trickled in and get counted, and then it seems to flip to Biden.

The opposite could happen with respect to those three states, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina, because all of them have systems unlike Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where they're counting the early votes now in those states. As I understand it, they're going to have them ready to report when the polls close in Florida and Georgia and North Carolina. It could, in those states, look like Biden is winning if we assume that the earlier votes are more for Democrats, and then as the day of votes come in more for Trump, that the trend could be going the other way, and people will be biting their nails or gritting their teeth or going, "Wait, was this stolen or rigged," or whatever they want to say, "in the other direction."

Amy: Exactly. That's why I know this is hard to tell people, and I'm very impatient person myself, but I would just really take a deep breath before you turn on the television, tell yourself, "It's okay. We don't really know everything," as you're watching the red and the blue shift over the course of the evening, pay really close attention to what they're saying about what vote is in and what vote they're still waiting on.

Ohio is also a place, Brian, that the absentee votes are counted first, and it closes relatively early. You're right. You're going to see these numbers coming in. Again, in talking to the folks who do this, I think that the networks are very well-prepared to educate voters about what's happening, but if you're the kind of person that watches without the volume on and you just see these numbers, you may be freaking out or excited for the wrong reasons.

Brian: Do you think Ohio is back in play this year?

Amy: Yes, absolutely is. I think that--

Brian: Solid Trump state in 2016.

Amy: That's right. One thing, though, that I think people overlook when they go back and talk about what happened in 2016 is, they look at the margin of victory for Trump, and they forget to look at the actual total vote that he got. If you look at a state like Ohio, you say, "Oh, Trump won it by eight points. That's a big win, but he actually only got 51% of the vote.

It's that Hillary Clinton only got 43%. 51%, normally we consider that a pretty close, right? You won by barely over 50%. That's not a huge win, so that state theoretically was always in play. I think we got caught up in the "Hillary did so badly there, and it means maybe Democrats can never run well there," but I think that's a very close one. Again, there's a reason that Biden's going there.

Brian: That's assuming that Biden can get a lot of votes that are potential Democratic votes that Hillary couldn't get. I'll actually throw-

Amy: Correct.

Brian: - just one more thought on the pile here, which is, I wonder if a nightmare scenario for Democrats is 2004, because do you remember what the fervor was on the Democratic side to defeat George W. Bush, the Iraq war was started. No WMDs, torture, tax cuts for the wealthy, the whole thing. "Oh, do they want George W. Bush out." Al Gore who had been sort of a knack candidate in a lot of people's eyes, didn't get such great turnout in 2000. Democratic turnout increased in 2004 because boy did they want George W. Bush out of office, but guess what, those who liked how hardcore George W. Bush was, at least as Democrats would describe him as hardcore on us against them and some of the evangelical staff and everything else, Republican turnout increased even more. I would think 2004 is the nightmare model for predicting 2016.

Amy: It's funny that you say that because literally in 2016, as the votes were coming in and Florida and it was pretty clear that all of these predictions that Democrats and the Clinton campaign had made about how they'd banked so many early votes and that was going to help them no matter what, wasn't turning out that way. I texted to one of my sources saying, "This feels a lot like 2004," where Democrats predicting they were going to win based on the fact that all of our models are showing "We've hit our vote total, we've hit our vote goal." Yes, guess what? Republicans hit their vote goals and exceeded them, but here's the difference. I think this is what we also have to keep in mind.

I'm not saying that there's not a chance that that could absolutely happen, that this turnout just blows through the roof, especially in these key swing states. George W. Bush came into that election with a 49% job approval rating. President Trump is coming into this with about a 44% job approval rating. There was a reservoir of goodwill for George W. Bush among voters that doesn't exist for Trump, and quite frankly has never existed. It's not like they just suddenly disliked him. It's been this way for four years. I think that Bush had put into the bank a lot of that 9/11 goodwill and was able to cash in on it too.

Brian: Amy Walter, Friday host of The Takeaway here on WNYC, senior editor of The Cook Political Report, and Joe in Bayside say Mondays on PBS every week.

Amy: Mondays, that's right. We'll be on this tonight, yes. I will be there on election night as well, all night.

Brian: Amy, thanks. Good luck. [unintelligible 00:32:54] this week.

Amy: Sure. Thanks. I won't, but thank you.

Brian: Me neither.

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