William: The investigation into
former president trump's
handling of top-secret
documents, threats to democracy,
and the resurgence of labor
unions are all playing into this
year's elections.
Welcome to you both, thank you
so much for being here on labor
day.
Amy, as we saw earlier in the
program, we've seen further
developments of the doj
investigation, we've seen
president trump angrily
responding to it, and this all
coming on the heels of president
Biden warning there's a real
threat to democracy.
Neither of them are on the
ballot but here they are
centerstage.
>> We've never seen anything
like this before.
Midterm elections are almost
always a referendum on the party
in power.
It's hard to make the out
parting the focus.
The only time that has actually
succeeded was in 1998 when it
was Democrats in the white
house, Republicans impeached
then president Clinton, but the
difference is that president
Clinton was really popular.
He had about a 60% approval
rating.
We've never really seen this
before.
Of course we've never seen a
former president put themselves
in the politics front and center
in the way that Donald Trump
has, and it is pretty clear that
the Democrats do believe that
the coalition of voters who
turned out in 2018, turned out
in 2020, not nest -- not
necessarily devote for Joe Biden
or Democrats, but to vote
against Donald Trump, that they
are still out there and they see
that anytime he is in the news,
it helps their prospects.
So they don't need to bring him
in all that much, but because he
will put himself front and
center, as you said, he had a
rally this week.
Regardless of where these
investigations go, we still have
the January 6 committee that
will hold them away don't know
how many hearings, maybe one or
so in the fall, and they still
have to put a report out.
Maybe that is before November.
And it isn't just that we've
never had a former president put
himself in the news so much,
it's also that you've never had
a former president claim that
the existing president isn't
legitimate or calling the
existing president, the
rightfully elected president, an
enemy of the state, or declaring
multiple times on social media
in the last week that he needs
to be reinstated, reinstate me,
re-hold the vote.
That is absolutely unheard of.
So when president Biden is
talking about democratic erosion
or when academics who specialize
in democratic erosion are
talking about democratic
erosion, they are talking about
the idea, this fundamental idea
of democracy being lost, that
has been broken.
William: We saw as you mentioned
the former president, even by
his standards, a pretty hard
speech against the current
president.
We heard president Biden say,
the Maga Republicans are a real
threat to democracy.
This we former president trump
flipped that on its head.
Let's take a listen to what he
had to say.
>> These are very dishonest,
sick people.
Very dishonest people.
Americans are sick of the lies,
sick of the hoaxes and scams,
and above all, sick of the
hypocrisy.
But our opponents have badly
miscalculated.
This egregious abuse of the law
is going to produce a backlash,
the likes of which nobody has
ever seen.
William: Some people have
suggested that president Biden
in all of his warnings about
former president trump and his
supporters was an effort to goad
trump into doing what we just
saw him doing, putting himself
back in centerstage.
Do you think politically that
does benefit him?
The Democrats, to have trump
doing what he is doing there?
>> I think accommodation of
issues, abortion being front and
center, overturning roe V. Wade,
trump and the continuing stories
coming out about what was at
mar-a-lago, of course what is
being presented by the January 6
committee, and the fact that the
party now seems to be really
lining up behind trump, all the
candidates he has endorsed have
won these primaries.
So he is in someway still on the
ballot, even though he's not,
and even though he's no longer
in the white house.
\Thing is an interesting point.
Is it that they are going to
turn out a whole bunch of people
who may not be interested in
showing up in the election, to
come out and support the
elections because they want to
defend the president?
We are reliving 2016 and the
voters are also looking at this
and thinking, are we going to
relive this in 2024?
So the exhaustion level among
independents is something we
still have to watch for.
If I'm a Republican strategist
right now, we are hearing them,
on television and in news
reports saying we just want to
focus on the economy or Biden.
William: We saw a lot of these,
both the president and former
president in Pennsylvania.
There is an issue of trying to
woo union voters, Democrats
always thought like, those are
my guys.
Is that going to hold true?
>> There has been growing
separation.
There was a long period of time
or union voters were democratic
voters.
Union members campaign for
Democrats.
Even going back many years, but
in 2016, I was out interviewing
union voters and they were
telling me, yes, our leadership
is democratic, we like trump.
So that separation has been
happening for some time.
President Biden today giving two
speeches to two union crowds.
Even not in front of union
crowds, Joe Biden loves to talk
about his connection to the
labor movement, and the labor
movement is getting or
interesting that has been for a
long time.
It used to be tied to industrial
jobs.
William: I'm thinking Amazon and
star boat's -- Starbucks,
Chick-fil-A.
>> Areas of the economy, as the
economy has shifted away from
industrialized labor, so has the
labor movement.
The labor movement has more life
right now than it has had in a
long time and a lot more support
.
But again, it's not clear that
that sort of lockstep for
Democrats exists the way it did
a generation ago.
>> We talk about union voters,
we are talking about white men
and hardhats.
Chipotle or those over -- other
brands you mentioned are part of
it.
Remember for years you had
service employees who were
working in service jobs in big
corporations or other places,
much more likely to be female,
much more likely to be a person
of color.
So there are labor folks who are
supporting Democrats but they
don't look like our image of
what a labor person looks like.
White men have not been voting
for Democrats are quite some
time.
What Democrats need to do is
hold on to his many of them as
they can, but continue to bring
those other types of voters into
the mix.
William: Amy and Tamra, great to
see you both, thanks for coming