On the final episode of this season of The Wilderness, Jon is joined by UCLA political scientist Lynn Vavreck and senior Harris campaign advisor David Plouffe. Lynn and Jon discuss why, despite all of this election's wild changes, Lynn is still expecting a close outcome in November and then David Plouffe sits down with Jon to talk about what we can do to help Kamala beat Trump.
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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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Sunday brunch when it's not even Sunday because with McCormick by your side, it's gonna be great. Okay, we made it. We started this season in late May when Donald Trump was just slightly ahead of Joe Biden. Democrats were worried but still hopeful. We end with Kamala Harris just slightly ahead of Donald Trump. Democrats are hopeful but still worried. In a nearly three-month span, there were more seismic political developments than in maybe any presidential campaign of my lifetime. A felony conviction, an assassination attempt, a debate so catastrophic that an incumbent president dropped out of the race just weeks before he would have been nominated. Then his vice president picked up the torch, united the party, won the internet, energized the anti-MAGA coalition, and will accept that nomination this week on her way to potentially making history. But the race is still close. After all that, the race is still close. And I've been wondering if it was always going to be close, no matter what happened. Because electorally, we've been an evenly divided country for a while now. And today the two parties are as different as they've ever been. The choice may be hard for some voters, but it's pretty clear. But this shouldn't make us feel like nothing matters. In a close race, everything matters. The candidates, their campaigns, their messages, and the volunteers who carry that message to voters. Especially voters who haven't yet decided what they'll do in November. The question is, how much does all that matter? Are we talking a few votes per precinct and the closest swing?
States? Or is the exuberance Democrats are feeling right now about something more? Maybe something bigger? This is why I wanted to talk to Lynn Vavrik again. She's the brilliant UCLA political scientist and friend of the pod. You heard in the first episode talking about a term she uses to describe our deeply closely divided electorate. So calcification sounds like polarization, but we think about it as polarization plus, and it makes politics feel stuck, like calcification in the bones. It's rigid. I figured Lynn could give us her take on the state of the new race for president with 80 days left, not based on polls or media coverage or how the campaigns are doing each day, but on her analysis of our calcified electorate and what might persuade voters to break out of it. You'll hear my conversation with Lynn next. Then I figured we'd end the show by getting our marching orders from the Harris Walls campaign itself. So I asked one of its newest members to chat, an old friend who's managed two of the three successful Democratic presidential campaigns of this century, senior Harris campaign advisor, David Plouffe. I'm Jon Favreau. Welcome to the wilderness. Lynn Vavrik, welcome back to the wilderness. Thank you so much. We had you on the first episode where you talked about how the electorate isn't just polarized but calcified, which means it's roughly 50/50 between two parties divided by identity inflected issues. And that's made the last several elections feel especially close heated. And of course, as we saw in 2020, even violent. And we talked about in April whether there are any developments that could break us out of those calcified elections. Since then, we've had one candidate who was.
Of a felony, won a debate, survived an assassination attempt, and is still getting roughly the same share of the vote that he had before. Then we had another candidate who lost the debate so badly that he ultimately had to drop out of the race and pass the baton to the first black woman vice president, who is now leading the race for president by a few points with less than 100 days to go. I wish I were a movie producer and you were pitching to me because I would greenlight this immediately. This is great. Or you'd be like, no one's going to believe that. So I wanted to have you back to know like how you're making sense of all this and whether you think breaking out of calcification seems any more likely now. I will tell you that when all of those events started to happen, the little voice in my head said, oh boy, here comes the biggest test of calcification.
We've seen. Yeah. It's one of my first thoughts as well. Oh, I love that. Okay. And then as the days passed and the weeks rolled on and crazier things, unexpected things started to happen.
And as you just said, there was not a lot of movement in the polls. And to be fair, nobody expected big movement. But there really wasn't a lot. I thought, wow, okay, you know, calcification is really holding up well here. And this is sort of the best evidence that we
could have ever dreamed up. So fast forward now to three weeks later, however many weeks it's been, some short number of days since all of this started. And you are starting to see movement in the polls. But--
Don't confuse that with, Oh, we're moving out of calcification, because what is the movement doing? The movement is taking us back to where we thought we would be initially. So we're back to, Man, this is going to be a close race. So what did you initially think about the—
political impact of Biden stepping aside. Like when it, what was your reaction when it first happened? Well much like I think everyone else, I was surprised. And then you sort of have to work.
Through, you know, wow, in my lifetime, I didn't think I'd see anything like, okay, so you get through all of that. But from, you know, a research...
Point of view, I thought that a couple of things could happen. My first thought was, boy, everybody
He thinks this is fundamentally going to change the race. And maybe it changes the veneer, but it doesn't change the landscape of American politics.
And so I wondered how long it was going to take for people to appreciate that. And I think that I sort of like to talk about it this way. Let's say we've all been to a really nice party and you know, the music's good and the company's good and the food is good and you're having a great time. time. Or if you're a big fan of the show, you're welcome to check out our channel for more. And if you're a big fan of the show, you're welcome to check out our channel for more.
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