Recorded September 17, 2026
BILL KRISTOL:
Hi, Bill Kristol here. Welcome back to Conversations. I’m very pleased to be joined again by my friend, David Axelrod, who needs no introduction, but obviously a top—
DAVID AXELROD:
Demands one.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, good point. That’s right. Henry Kissinger, there’s some famous story of someone introducing Kissinger. I think it’s not apocryphal, actually. It’s some big dinner and he said, “Needs no introduction,” and Kissinger, that was Kissinger’s line always. Or maybe he said, “Therefore, I’ll provide a short introduction.” And Kissinger was, “Oh no, I’d like a long introduction.”
DAVID AXELROD:
Yes.
BILL KRISTOL:
Anyway.
DAVID AXELROD:
And he was half kidding.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah. Yeah. Obviously top strategist for President Barack Obama when he ran for president in 2008, served in the White House with President Obama, many other campaigns, many other contributions though to our political discourse, now prominent analyst on CNN. And we’ve worked together on the Institute of Politics, which David set up, what, over almost 15 years ago, I guess.
DAVID AXELROD:
University of Chicago, yes.
BILL KRISTOL:
At the University of Chicago, which has been a—
DAVID AXELROD:
You were a founding—
BILL KRISTOL:
I was a founding—
DAVID AXELROD:
I’m not allowed to say that today. You were a founder, one of the founders.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah. I wasn’t really a founder, but I was happy to be on the advisory board and chime in a tiny bit. And it’s been a great success in my view. But so thank you for what you’ve done there in terms of helping students. And thanks for joining me today, obviously, David.
DAVID AXELROD:
Sure.
BILL KRISTOL:
So I thought we could talk maybe about half the show on 2026. People were very interested in just your analysis of the state of the race nationally and some key states and key tactical questions over these last seven weeks. And then I want to talk about something we’ve both been interested in, I think, which is sort of economic populism and how to handle it, especially for the Democrats and how powerful that is or isn’t, or is it a trap and all that sort of thing.
So 2026, here we are, what are we at? September, it’s hard to believe, September 17th. So it’s not far away. We’re less than seven weeks from election day. With early voting, we’re less than some states, we’re beginning the election season. So where do you think we stand?
DAVID AXELROD:
Look, there are historical precedents that I guess have some value and they go to where the president’s approval rating is and particularly where the president’s approval rating is on the things that are most important to people, which is generally the economy. That’s certainly true now. And where Trump’s approval rating is, is terrible. He’s somewhere in the 30s depending on which polling average you accept, but everyone, Republican and Democrat acknowledges that he is in a deep hole and he seems to keep digging, which is kind of odd, but he keeps insisting the economy is great. He is focused on getting his name on the Kennedy Center or destroying it if he can’t and stuff like that.
And we’re mired in the war in Iran, which I was on the air at CNN the other day with my colleagues, Scott Jennings, and he said, “This war has been a great success. We’ve decimated…” The president’s line. And the global energy picture has been completely captured by this war and the Iranians. It has been stalled. We are suffering the economic impacts of all of this and they keep hitting us. And so this idea that we’ve decimated them is… And Scott said, “Well, I can’t believe you’re denigrating the military.” I’m not denigrating the military. The military’s done everything they were asked. I’m denigrating the civilian leaders who didn’t know what the hell they were doing. And the public knows this. They know that these tariffs have raised their costs. They know that the war has raised their costs, and they’re pissed because Donald Trump promised that he was going to lower their costs and wasn’t going to get us into any senseless wars. So I’d say the picture is generally really bad for Republicans.
Democrats probably need to win about 9 or 10 seats to take over the House with redistricting, but it’s not a large number. The average, I think, has been somewhere closer to 23 or 25 over the years. I think they’d be happy to win that many seats this year because of how polarized and gerrymandered we are. But the question is the one you raised, which is how big is the wave? The Senate map was not promising for Democrats coming in. Now there are 11 states that people are talking about. Who would’ve thought we would be talking about Kansas and Nebraska? James Carville has been very high on Mississippi. People are letting their imaginations run wild here, because you and I both lived through big waves, I still have the tire tracks from 2010 on my rear end. You may have been partly responsible for that, I don’t know. But we lost 63 seats in 2010. And the thing about waves is, you kind of hear the rumbling, you have a sense that something’s coming, you just don’t know how big and dramatic it’s going to be until you’re staring at it just over the horizon. And right now, Bill, if you look at the average of the Democratic lead, people nationally saying that they’ll vote for a Democratic candidate or Republican candidate, it’s getting larger, it’s growing.
BILL KRISTOL:
Right.
DAVID AXELROD:
And that creates a sense that this could be really big, but there are countervailing factors. The Republicans are spending a shit ton of money. I will tell you that I sat down with Tony Fabrizio, who you know, who’s Trump’s pollster and a very good pollster, and Chris LaCivita, his political guy. I sat down with them at Arizona State in February and we were talking about the midterms and they had a very, very clear strategy and it started with, “We’ve been outspent the last several midterms. We’re going to outspend Democrats and by a lot. We’re going to raise our own money and spend it.” Trump, he has raised a lot money, he’s now finally spending it.
That was number one and they’ve succeeded in that. Number two was, “We’re going to make the kind of radical left the face of the Democratic Party, and shift the debate to issues that favor us.” The third point though was, “We’ve made a big bet on the Big Beautiful Bill that we’ve front loaded tax cuts, so they were retroactive and the checks would flow, the money would flow in 2026. And by the time we get to the fall, if people are feeling good about that and feeling better about the economy, we feel we have a fighting chance.”
Well, that’s a bet they’ve lost. That’s a bet they’ve lost because they did not know that the head man was going to get into this war in Iran, was going to go crazy with tariffs, was going to declare a trade war with our largest or second-largest trading partner. I mean, the vicious Canadians. So I mean, we’ll see what all this money does. And the other factor is, what kind of finagling will he try and do? He’s still trying to mess with mail-in ballots despite the court rulings. And the one thing that I did a long time ago was sell my “Well, he’d never do that” stock.
BILL KRISTOL:
Right.
DAVID AXELROD:
I don’t think there’s anything that he wouldn’t do. And so you have to be alert to that. And at the very least, there could be a lot of chaos at the end of this process in races that seem close because he will declare them corrupted and stolen and will instruct Mike Johnson to act accordingly when members come to be seated. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but Mike Johnson seems a little bit ill-disposed to challenging the president.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah. Well, that last thing, of course, it’s probably worth a whole ‘nother discussion. I mean, I think on that incidentally, people have focused a lot on what Johnson could do after the election in terms of seating members. I would say the collusion with red state governors, since all the contested Senate races, not all, but almost all are in red states and many will be governed by pretty Trumpy governors and have pretty Trumpy secretaries of state. And it turns out when you really think through how if you wanted to really create chaos, if the count between Talarico and Paxton is dead even, it’s 11:00 PM Tuesday night, election night, you find some local Republicans to say, “Ballots are being stolen in inner city Houston and down in the valley, terrible what’s happening. We need the governor to come in.” And Governor Abbot says, “Absolutely right. The Texas Rangers will be showing up to take safe possession of those ballots.”
And Todd Blanche and Kash Patel will say, “We’re going to be there with him because we have the federal duty to guarantee…” And you could have real chaos in some of these… I think that’s the most dangerous place actually, is the red states, the blue areas of red states. Affects the House races some obviously, but really could throw Senate races into chaos. And the Senate, that is more likely to be 51-49 than the House… It’s unlikely the House is going to be on the knife’s edge in my view, and that means a little hard for Johnson to overturn 15 House races on January 3rd. Whereas the Senate—
DAVID AXELROD:
It doesn’t mean he wouldn’t try, but yes.
BILL KRISTOL:
The Senate, you quite easily could have two or three that are—
DAVID AXELROD:
So here’s my question to you. I keep thinking that if Democrats take the Senate, it’s less likely to be 51-49.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, I agree with this.
DAVID AXELROD:
It’s more likely to be larger than that because it means the wave was sufficient for the—
BILL KRISTOL:
I agree with that. I think people—
DAVID AXELROD
[inaudible] 51.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yes, that’s been our experience with waves. And I’ve thought, whatever it’s worth, this all felt to me more like ’94 or ’06 or 2010, which are the big wave years. 2018 was kind of a wave, but it was sort of more of a natural midterm election against the pretty unpopular president where they saved the Senate. They picked up Senate seats, they saved the Senate seats at the end, partly with the Supreme Court nomination of Kavanaugh. And so I think if you’re younger, you think that’s as big as it can get. And maybe it is incidentally, because of the things you mentioned, the structural factors that impede waves now. On the other hand, the wave does surprise you, and by definition it gets to these states that you didn’t think were in play. I remember that so well from both winning and losing wave elections.
And so what do you think? I guess I’ll just ask, I think especially you’re in Chicago, but I was in Eastern Iowa, I hadn’t realized Eastern Iowa, the joke there is that it’s the westernmost suburbs of Chicago. You go to Des Moines and it’s not Illinois, right? Des Moines is a different part of the country almost. But anyway, it was in Iowa City.
DAVID AXELROD:
They do have the Iowa Cubs there but go ahead.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yes. Well, good point. But in Iowa City, and I was struck how much in Iowa, the wave feeling, it felt to me like it could be a wave there. And then certainly into the West even though—
DAVID AXELROD:
Well, let’s stop there for a second, Bill, because the thing that people need to really focus on is just how devastating the war and the tariffs have been—
BILL KRISTOL:
I agree.
DAVID AXELROD:
…for these states through the heartland. Farm states, farmers have been devastated by, first, the tariffs, and now the crisis in the cost of fertilizer, which is affected by what’s going on in the Strait of Hormuz and on diesel fuel, which is record. I said yesterday on TV, “Trump wants to immortalize himself by putting his name on things. Here’s something he can legitimately put his name on, the highest diesel costs in history on his watch.” And people know this. And so his numbers in Iowa, he won the state by 13 points. He’s now 10 points underwater in Iowa. And he has problems akin to that in Nebraska, in Kansas. Ohio and Michigan are touched a lot by this fight with Canada as well as the tariffs. So that is what’s made this competitive. And yeah, I think Democrats are going to pick up at least two and maybe three congressional seats in Iowa. I think they’re going to win the governor’s race and the Senate race is competitive.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah. And you touched on this before, but just to dot that I and cross that T, both tariffs and the war have this sort of peculiarity, you might say, which has not been characteristic of other issues in the past necessarily, which is they’re entirely Trump’s policies. The tariffs were unilateral. The Supreme Court struck down a bunch of them as unilateral, exceeding executive power, and he promptly found another excuse to do them. And in Congress, Democrats have spoken up at least against these tariffs and Republicans have consistently refused to overrule Trump on any of them. And the war obviously, more famously almost, he’s got done unilaterally. And I think there’ve been 10 war power resolutions, which Democrats have voted for and Republicans have voted against curbing the war. So,I mean, what everyone thinks of Iraq, I was thinking of someone who mentioned it and I did this talk in Iowa—
DAVID AXELROD:
You know something about this.
BILL KRISTOL:
I know, right? And people say, “What about Iraq?” And I said, “Well, it’s a good comparison. Here’s the comparison. In ’04, it wasn’t a killer issue against Bush or the Republicans.”
DAVID AXELROD:
No.
BILL KRISTOL:
Because why? Because half the Democrats, and you know a lot about this from President Obama, but half the Democrats in Congress had voted for it and it’s sort of blunt… Remember John Kerry, he was for the war before he was against it. By ’06, ’07, ’08, it was a killer issue obviously because we had had a series of votes where the Democrats were against it and Bush was sustaining it.
DAVID AXELROD:
This is more akin to that.
BILL KRISTOL:
And this is more akin to that. And you put on the tariffs in addition. So you have a rare case of two policies that have gone badly, are unpopular, and are kind of unequivocally the responsibility of the president and the responsibility of a party that’s gone along 100% with the president. It’s an unusual thing, I think, in politics to see that.
DAVID AXELROD:
It is. By the way, on that vote, the war powers vote this week, two members from Iowa who are particularly vulnerable broke with the Republicans to vote against the resolution. Ashley Hinson, their Senate candidate who’s also in the House did not. And it’s funny because she did not break with Trump on the war in the same week that she started running an ad in Iowa talking about how important bipartisanship is and suggesting that she would always do what was right for the state and so on, which struck me as bad timing for her. I was surprised, honestly, that she didn’t break.
BILL KRISTOL:
She needs a lot of spending by the Trump Super PAC, so it’s a little complicated maybe for them, some of those folks. I also wonder—
DAVID AXELROD:
This is the problem though. This thing you raise is a problem. They can’t live with Trump and they can’t live without him. And that is a real problem for them.
BILL KRISTOL:
And also as you and I’ve seen, it’s late to be breaking. I mean, honestly, the voters really give you a lot of credit if in late September you say, “I got some problems with this guy who’s been president for two years and whom I’ve supported constantly.” I mean, I remember in ’94, which is really ancient history, but there was a lot of Democratic hopes, a lot of Democrats did distance themselves from Clinton in that respect. And some did from Obama in 2010, but really more from Clinton, I would say. And you had genuine moderate Democrats who really didn’t support Clinton Care, the healthcare plan, and didn’t support some of the other things that were very controversial.
And at the end of the day, if you get a wave, I remember this in Tennessee, that Jim Cooper, a really fine guy and a moderate Dem, he was running for the Senate, was it against Frist or Thompson? They were both up in the same year for some reason. And they lost like 62, 38. Now that was partly the South going the way it was going. But anyway, I just wonder even on the distancing how much it will matter.
DAVID AXELROD:
No, especially when you’re so flagrantly, enthusiastically a rubber stamp for so long. I think it will look to voters like what it is, which is, I don’t want to impugn these people by comparing them to rats, but rats off a sinking ship. So yeah, I think it’s problematical. Go ahead, what were you going to say?
BILL KRISTOL:
I was going to say to that point, what about the other part of the Republican strategy of just demonizing the Dems? How much do you think that could help? What do you think are some of the tactics?
DAVID AXELROD:
Look, I do think that has some power. I mean, I do think that has some power. They’re doing their trans hit against Talarico in Texas. And my sense is it has some power, though he has established himself so well there that… By the way, that’s an interesting race in a different way. We’ll get back to the sort of demonization thing, which is a classic strategy. When you’re in trouble, you got to irradiate the other guys and hope that people, their attention is shifted. I don’t think it’ll work for a reason I’ll tell you.
But in Texas, because Paxton is such an abysmal candidate and it can’t raise money, the super PACs, including Trump’s are having to pick up the slack. They have to buy media at a different rate than candidates get. Candidates get preferential rate. Now, parties will too, but these super PACs don’t. So they are matching Talarico now, who’s raised a phenomenal amount of money online. They’re matching him in terms of points, but they’re having to spend four times as much to do it. So their money isn’t going to go as far as his. All of this was what Republicans who supported John Cornyn predicted, which was you’re going to have to shift a lot of money, you’re going to need elsewhere, to Texas, and that is happening.
I think the demonization strategy will have some effect, and it’s not just about they’re trying to make El-Sayed a national candidate. He’s got a great name for that. Abdul El-Sayed, they can do all of that sort of signifying. They’ve done a lot of opposition research. So in different states, they’ll go after a candidate. In Iowa, they’re going after Turek because he had some absenteeism during the campaign this year and they’re making him out to be absentee legislators. I think he’s been voted legislator of the year there and he’s the most bipartisan guy in the Iowa House. So they’re doing what you would do.
But the problem is midterm elections are always about the president, always. It’s very hard to shift. That was moderated in 2022 because the Dobbs decision was so much of an earthquake that it moderated the anti-Biden sentiment in that election. But these races, we’ve only had two races where the party in power have gained seats, and that was in 2002 when Bush, right after 9/11 was hugely popular. And in ’98 when Clinton was popular, I mean both those guys were in the 60s. This guy’s in the 30s. So the idea that you’re going to do this bait and switch and move people’s attention to the… People do not believe that if they elect these members that America’s going to become a socialist dystopia or a communist dystopia.
BILL KRISTOL:
Particularly because I think this is where some of my intellectual friends, “Well, Democrats need a positive message.” I agree they need to work out a whole bunch of things. We’ll get to that in a few minutes, actually. I want to talk about that. But voters aren’t being foolish. The next two years, it’s all about either going along with Trump, or if you want to be less nice rubber-stamping Trump, or checking Trump. Democrats are not going to pass the heck of a lot of legislation that gets signed by the president in the next two years. There might be some freakish things where they do get some bipartisanship, which is fine. And the most radical members of the Democratic Caucus are not going to pass any legislation.
And anyway, Trump is president. I mean, voters are not being silly in the midterm. Voters are not being foolish in thinking I either want to support Trump or I want to check Trump. And all these other things are secondary. I mean, who cares if there’s eight… I mean, honestly, 12 members of the DSA who were part of the Democratic House delegation, what are they going to do? Now longer term, there are all kinds of issues that you can raise legitimately about that. Yeah.
DAVID AXELROD:
But it is exacerbated for Republicans by the fact that Trump wants to be… He wants it to be about him, and they are putting him forward because they want to try and encourage Republicans who support him, who don’t vote in midterms to vote for, to come out and vote. But that is at some cost because as long as Trump is in the center of this race, it favors Democrats. He’s deeply unpopular. And as you say, people know that this is a… And if you look at polling, and this question’s been asked in many different polls, do people fear that if they vote Democrat, the Democrats will take the country too far to the left, or if they vote Republican, that Republicans will continue to vote in lockstep with Trump and nothing will change.
That second argument is far more concerning to voters than the first. It is, as you say, it is about that. It is about whether Trump is going to have a blank check for two more years or whether there’s going to be some willingness to challenge some of his policies. And basically whether there’ll be change or whether we’re just going to continue the way we’re going. And people don’t like the direction we’re going right now.
BILL KRISTOL:
Especially if he’d ended the war two months ago or “ended it”, whatever. And same with the tariffs, if he’s subsided on that. But I think in a way, having them both. He’s succeeded in making them both live issues as opposed to just people will punish you for things they didn’t like you doing. Even if they ended, you haven’t done them at the end of the day. I mean, this was true of Bush in ’05 with social security “privatization”, which died by the late summer of ’05, but still they thought Bush was out of touch and he wasn’t doing what he said and so forth. But if an issue is ongoing, then you really do—
DAVID AXELROD:
Like the war, which ultimately was hugely damaging to Republicans [inaudible]—
BILL KRISTOL:
I think the war has struck… This is against Iowa, which is an anti-war state. And I was in the liberal part of Iowa, so don’t take any of this too much. It doesn’t mean too much. But I was struck, I chatted with various, not students so much, but actually people from the area, and it’s a liberal-ish area, but if the community shows up as they do with these… Actually, you had given a talk in the same series, I think six months before. It was 1,500 people. There’s a lot of people and I tried to mix and mingle. And so these were upper middle class people, and I took it some of them vote Republican some of the time and probably mostly Democrats, but I was struck how much the war was on people’s minds. I’m very interested in it. I think it’s very important. I think it’s really disrupted the whole international order in very dangerous ways, but whatever.
But generally, the conventional wisdom is, you know, its gas prices, it’s the local stuff, and this war is tied to the prices, which makes it more of an issue. But I was struck how many people are really upset about the war itself. “Gee, they didn’t tell us the truth to how our bases were being damaged, and they seem insensitive to the strains on the military. And can we trust that Hegseth guy?” Again, I’m really now generalizing from seven impressionistic conversations, I suppose, but I don’t know. Is that your sense too? I think the war’s a little bigger than one might have expected.
DAVID AXELROD:
Well, his conduct of the war is polling terribly, so take that for what you will. I think the bigger issue, and obviously the economic implications, as we said before, he made the decision and it is at the core of gas prices going up, diesel prices through the roof. Gas prices could hit $5 before this election happens. But I think the other thing is he just isn’t focused on the things they said they thought he would focus on. They hired him in the first place in 2016 because they thought he’s a great businessman. He’ll know how to manage the economy. They felt like the economy was pretty good before the pandemic. They went with him again in 2024 despite everything because they had confidence that he would do something about the economy and would lower costs.
And the war, I mean, he is the person that he mocked. I mean, he seems to be involved in things that they don’t understand why he’s involved in. They had been told last June or the June before last that he told us that he had obliterated Iran’s nuclear program, and now we’re at war because he said he’s trying to prevent them from getting a bomb. I mean, the whole thing is just so ill-conceived and his lack of coherent explanations for it, his shifting explanations for it, his shifting predictions about when it would end. Now he says it won’t be till after the midterms. It’s a catastrophe.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, it is. And unfortunately for the country, since he can’t stay even… Politically, it’s bad for him. But yeah.
DAVID AXELROD:
I mean, by the way, I wonder how much it’s penetrated with people when he sort of dismissed the conditions under which the service people on the USS Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln were living the somewhat desperate circumstances it seemed like, and he said they should be there longer.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, no, I wonder. Yeah.
DAVID AXELROD:
His utter lack of empathy is such a big part of his liability.
BILL KRISTOL:
Interesting.
DAVID AXELROD:
Yeah. I mean, this is I think why Biden, ultimately, I think it was Biden’s greatest strength in 2020, was he had this preternatural empathy and Trump showed none.
BILL KRISTOL:
Well, speaking of 2020, let’s turn in a way to 2028 or just to the bigger picture both this year and 2028. I guess I have two things. I want to talk about economic populism and especially maybe in the context of the AI, the data center stuff that’s really just exploded.
But you have a theory in general, we chatted about this a week ago, and we don’t have to get into individual candidates at this point. There are too many. It would take us 17 hours to go through the likely Democrats.
DAVID AXELROD:
There will plenty of time for that. Yeah.
BILL KRISTOL:
But you have a general theory, I think, about how presidential elections sometimes work at the end of a presidency, I guess in particular. Say a word about that because I think that’s very interesting in thinking about ’28.
DAVID AXELROD:
I think people always look for the remedy, not the replica. Even if a president’s popular, I don’t think people look for a replica of what they have. They look for someone who will correct the deficiencies they see in the incumbent. So just for example, George W. Bush was seen as a guy who saw the world in Manichaean terms, black and white, didn’t really appreciate the gray and the subtleties. And he was seen as sort of emblematic of the politics of Washington, the polarization and so on.
And along comes Barack Obama, and he was the most obvious antidote to all that. He really wasn’t associated with the mess in Washington, even though he had been there for a few years. And he was challenging it, both parties. And he seemed like a guy who saw the world in the more nuanced way that it exists and was smart enough to handle it. And Trump obviously—
BILL KRISTOL:
Can I just ask, in 2008, was that a pretty conscious part of your effort and your messaging?
DAVID AXELROD:
Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, when I wrote a strategic memo to him in 2006, it was a lot about the replica-remedy thing, and how he was the most obvious counterpoint to Bush. And so I always look at it through that lens. We need not dwell on the fact that Trump was the most vivid counterpoint to Obama. But the question is, what is it about Donald Trump? I mean, there are a plethora of deficiencies to be remedied. The question is which are most salient to people? And I would argue that almost all of them fall in a character box. The absence of humility, the absence of empathy, the absence of honesty and integrity. The absence of honesty and integrity. I think people think he’s honest about his dishonesty, so he’s authentic in that way. The inclination to divide instead of unite, I think all of those things are troubling to people. So that’s one overlay that I think will govern, that if I was looking for a winning candidate, I’d be looking for people who over-index on those sort of basic decency and character dimensions.
The second is I think this election, and you and I, Bill, are old enough to remember it well, reminds me of nothing so much as the election of ’76 after Watergate, when people were just really shocked by what happened in the White House, and Nixon’s trespasses and so on. And along comes Jimmy Carter, who no one knew at this point in the cycle. And he says, “I will never lie to you.” He’s a Sunday school teacher from Georgia. He said, “I will never lie to you, and we need a government as good as our people.” And people believed that he would be a force for real fundamental change, that he would give Washington the angioplasty that it needed.
And I think people will be looking for someone who will challenge the whole system, not someone who’s a reflexive partisan, but someone who is a reformer. And I think that’s going to be important. And obviously part of it is the thing you touch on. I think there is a growing sense that the system is corrupt and rigged against everyday people. And not just the system of politics, but our capitalist system. And I’m not arguing that people are going to be looking to do away with capitalism. But I think they want it to function in a way that is fair, that gives people a chance. And so I think there’s going to be an element of populism to a winning message in 2028. And the formula would be to, as much as possible, find someone who combines all of those qualities. And no one is a perfect fit, but I think the ones who come closest to it are going to have the greatest chance for success.
BILL KRISTOL:
And I suppose, and the Carter example also reminds us that people do win nominations who are not well known two years out. And we all think of that, [inaudible] says that’s a phenomenon of the modern current era with social media and sudden fame. But this was 1975, 6. Carter was a one term, think about it, governor of Georgia, sort of respected. He had been sort of a liberal Southerner in terms of race. He wasn’t always, but he sort of became one, let’s say, and looked like that. It was that, to be fair, by the time he was governor.
And so he got decent press for that, nationally as he deserved, I suppose. But he wasn’t dramatic, I think it’s fair to say. And so the degree to which he was able to go from 1%. And he defeated, again, people forget this, those of us who remember some of these people, they were prominent and important senators and other governors running in 1975, 6. It wasn’t like a field of nobodies.
DAVID AXELROD:
Yes. Including Hubert Humphrey, who had been vice president and a former nominee.
BILL KRISTOL:
Right. He came in. And Scoop Jackson had lost in ’72, but then Birch Bayh and a lot of people and—
DAVID AXELROD:
Mo Udall.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, the degree to which Carter just came from nowhere. I do wonder if some of these names are a little obscure now, if they just get a little bit of a break, you have to have some tactic or some luck where it gets you into that first tier, right?
DAVID AXELROD:
Well, Carter sort of invented the, I mean, he lifted the salience of the caucuses.
BILL KRISTOL:
Right, Iowa.
DAVID AXELROD:
Iowa caucuses, and he picked that up and he turned that to his advantage, and that sort of propelled him into the discussion. But it’s really, it’s not just what the candidate does, it’s what the public is looking for. And he had what people were looking for. I mean, the modern media environment changes some of that, and you need qualities that he wouldn’t necessarily have had, although maybe he had it more than he got credit for, but you have to have very authenticity, and he did have that, but you have to also be able to hang on podcasts and do vertical videos and you have to communicate in the way people communicate today. So that’s another quality people need.
And by the way, one other thing I would add, I would expect that youth will be over-indexing as well. I think that after two octogenarians as president, I think people are going to be looking for someone who isn’t collecting a Social Security check, and whose lifespan may be decades ahead and not years ahead of them.
BILL KRISTOL:
As some person maybe in his 30s came up to me after the talk in Iowa, it was so funny, and I’d made this point briefly. So this kid isn’t a 22-year-old. This is someone, as I say, who’s clearly a professional, in his 30s, not a student anymore. And he was kind of just like, “Can you believe it?” I made this point, but 2016 was, I guess Hillary and Trump were then in their mid to late 60s respectively. And then of course, Biden and Trump in their 70s at that point. And until Harris took over from Biden, it was going to be the two oldest people ever to run for president in the same year, just so we… At a time of great technological change and challenges and so forth.
And he said he sort of thanked me for making the point. And he just said, “You just can’t believe how crazy that looks to people my age.” And again, he was 35, he wasn’t 21. So I mean, how much even crazier is it for people who are in their 20s? So I guess “young,” what do you think, I think “young” in this discussion though can mean up to early 50s. You don’t have to be a kid, right?
DAVID AXELROD:
Right. But I think people in their 60s, certainly anyone who runs who was in their 70s would be at a disadvantage. Now my friend Rahm Emanuel’s running and he’s actually said, he would be… He wants an age limit on the presidency of 75.
BILL KRISTOL:
Just high enough that he can make it in though, so that’s right.
DAVID AXELROD:
Well, but not so high that he wouldn’t have to leave at some point. But he’s also, he’s frenetically—
BILL KRISTOL:
Youthful.
DAVID AXELROD:
…energetic. I’m not sure how much that will factor into that, but I think youth will be important. And the point that you and that young man made is really obvious to people. I call myself a “self-loathing baby boomer.” I think we all ought to get off the stage and turn over leadership. You served in the White House and I did too. The reason that I spoke out about Biden when I did before 2024 was because it seemed absurd to me that anyone that age should be in that job. It’s just damn too hard. It demands too much.
And as you point out in this day and age, we need people who are fluent in the challenges of our time and the technological challenges of our time. We’re feeling it right now. I know that if Barack Obama were president right now and he were back in the day, he would be convening the leaders of the industry, the safety experts, leaders of Congress, and he would be leading a discussion about how we fashion something quickly to solve this safety issue and deal with people’s concerns. This is not exactly what we’re seeing from this president who assures people that it’s all a hoax. AI safety is all a hoax. So, speaks to the issue.
BILL KRISTOL:
One thing, I want to get to the populism quickly, at least for a few minutes, which AI is a big part now apparently, but it should be, but on the age, I’ll just tell one quick story. So I got a text from someone who’s our age, maybe a little older actually, who I knew slightly from Idaho, a guy lives in Idaho. And I had said something about I thought Kansas was going to play and Nebraska, just like we were saying. Maybe even South Dakota where there’s an independent running. And he said, “In Idaho, the Democrats have withdrawn their candidate, because the brand is so toxic there.” And so there’s an independent, impressive guy actually, Todd Achilles’s running, a veteran business guy, moderate Democrat. And he’s running against Jim Risch. And I’ve known Jim Risch a little bit. He’s been in the Senate quite a while.
And so he said, “We have a chance.” I said, “Oh, come on.” I mean, Idaho’s literally, I don’t know what it’s like, plus 36 Trump or something like that. I mean, it’s a pretty Republican state. And he said, “How old do you think Jim Risch is?” So I think of Risch as kind of a contemporary of mine. So I don’t know, 70, 72. I used to know him, talked a little bit about foreign policy when I spoke with Republican senators.
And he said, “Jim Risch is 83. Jim Risch is running for reelection in Idaho. When he’s 83, he would serve out till his term, if he served out his term, he’d be 89.” He said, “It’s amazing out here that we have a good independent candidate against him. I know it sounds crazy. It’s more up hill than Iowa and Kansas and Nebraska.” But he said, “Just trust me on this.” It’s a small state, so everyone knows every— people basically, and Risch doesn’t do much public stuff. But it’s not going to be hard to explain to people how old he is. And he said, “Trust me, this one could be a real surprise,” partly for other reasons and the wave and just the normal reasons why people are unhappy obviously with the prices and all. But he said that, it’s just brought home to me again. It’s an interesting case study. I think it’ll be an interesting case study.
DAVID AXELROD:
Yeah, it will.
BILL KRISTOL:
Did you realize Jim Risch—
DAVID AXELROD:
No.
BILL KRISTOL:
… was 83 years old? I mean, that’s kind of old to run. He’s the same age as Mitch McConnell.
DAVID AXELROD:
One sideline to that story you just told is it’s interesting to me that in this year there are so many states where Democrats have folded, red states, and independent candidates have sort of subsumed the Democrats and are running because the Democratic brand is so bad. And MAGA is now having to create a separate PAC in order to put their ads on the air because the MAGA brand is so unappealing to so many people. On this age thing, I just got to tell this story. I know you want to get to populism.
BILL KRISTOL:
No, no, it’s fine. This is very interesting.
DAVID AXELROD:
Back in the day, Bob Byrd was running for his final term, and they asked me to pitch him. I was a media consultant at the time. And there was a big meeting and a lot of his people were there, and they wheel him into the room in a wheelchair. He’s got a cup of tea in a saucer and the teacup is rattling in the saucer.
And he looks at me and he says, “How are you going to persuade the people of West Virginia to vote for a man who’d be 94 years old at the end of his term?” And it was a damn good question. I thought about, well, how honest am I going to be here with him? I said, what the hell? I don’t care. And so I said, “Senator, I guess I’d tell them that three years of you is better than six years of anybody else.” And in truth, that would be an argument I would make because the seniority for a small state like that, and him in particular was really, really important. But everybody in the room gasped and he stared at me for a while, then he started laughing, and they started laughing. But I’m not sure that—
BILL KRISTOL:
Did you do the race?
DAVID AXELROD:
No, I did not. I was not invited to do the race. So they laughed, but not that hard. But Susan Collins is counting on the seniority-in-a-small-state argument in order to win her race this time. I’m not sure it carries as much weight as it did then. I think that the nature of our politics and the experience with this gerontocracy is such that I think it’s going to be tough for her. Even though I always say, Bill, that when the world ends, there’ll just be a pile of rubble, and from that pile, a pair of hands will emerge and a head, and it will be Susan Collins because she is such an adroit survivor. I’m not sure she can survive this.
BILL KRISTOL:
I mean, without getting it too far down, it’s fascinating though. It’s terrific. The appropriations used to also, just practically speaking, have more power because there was pork in a way that there isn’t as much today.
DAVID AXELROD:
And Byrd, of course, was the master.
BILL KRISTOL:
And he was the master, and he was chairman of appropriations. So I mean, it was—
DAVID AXELROD:
I gave him the right answer, but—
BILL KRISTOL:
It’s amazing when you drive across the border here from Virginia to West Virginia, people know this, of course. It’s like, wow, why are all these federal facilities suddenly half a mile across the border? What was wrong with the State of… They could have put them in Virginia. It’s a little closer to DC, but nope.
DAVID AXELROD:
But just on the populism point—
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, let’s go. Tell me about that generally.
DAVID AXELROD:
I think people believe that the system is corrupt. I think there is a merging of the issue about campaign finance and the concentration of power and wealth. I mean, is there some envy? Maybe. But I think the bigger issue that people sense that is resonant with people is when a few people amass so much wealth, they also amass a lot of power and they leverage that power. We’re sort of back in the gilded age in that way in which these tech guys can dictate whether they get regulated or not. And I think this is where a lot of the resistance to these data centers is, they feel like it’s being shoved down their throat and these guys have so much power, no one’s going to stop them.
So I think that kind of populism combined with people’s sense that they’re working harder and harder, and it’s harder and harder still to pay for the things that you would describe as basic to a decent life, are going to be a part of the discussion in 2028. The status quo isn’t working for people. Now, maybe if inflation settles down and wages consistently outstrip… But this healthcare issue, housing, these are endemic kind of issues that need to be addressed in a serious way. And I don’t think there’s any doubt that that will be part of the… I think every Democrat who runs, and maybe some Republicans, will incorporate some elements of populism in their program.
BILL KRISTOL:
And of course there are different versions of it. And if you think of the Gilded Age or pre-Gilded Age, I would say the 1890s kind of thing, you got your William Jennings Bryan agenda, you’ve got your Teddy Roosevelt agenda, you’ve got progressives around the country. Well, Wilson sort of, but I mean Bob La Follette, whatever agenda, Wisconsin kind of Michigan type agenda. I mean, there’s an awful lot of ways you could address the populism issue, it seems to me.
DAVID AXELROD:
Yeah, and I think you’ll see different candidates taking different approaches. Who knows if a guy like Ossoff says he’s not going to run even though he’s sure acting like a guy who is. And there is kind of a Teddy Rooseveltian feel to his populism, it’s anti-corruption populism. There are others who are more focused on the prairie populism or a more fundamental economic populism.
But it’s a worthy debate. Listen, man, I’m a fan of campaigns. Everybody hates the fact that on November 4th, the presidential campaign begins. I’m like, let’s do it because we need that. One of the tragedies for the Democratic Party in 2024 was that it didn’t have the opportunity for that debate. Campaigns are important. They reveal people in ways that give you some sense of what kind of presidents they would be and where they want to go. So we’ll see. But various forms of populism, as you point out, are going to be in the mix in 2028, no doubt.
BILL KRISTOL:
On this November 4th point, we’ll close on this and I’ll let you go. But Doug Sosnik, whom I actually did this Conversation just a month ago, who you know obviously was Bill Clinton’s guy in White House.
DAVID AXELROD:
Brilliant guy.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, very smart. He made a couple of points. Well, one is just he’s a Clinton guy who’s not exactly some left-wing populist, hasn’t been most of his life on economics. And he said, you actually look just at the charts of distribution of wealth and it’s just stunning.
DAVID AXELROD:
We’re at the lowest point in… Wages are at its lowest part of the GDP in history.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, it’s—
DAVID AXELROD:
And corporate profits are off the charts and the distribution of wealth is skewing way, way, way toward the top. And something’s got to give. There’s going to be a reaction to all of that. And technology is driving a lot of this. If you can produce what you produce with fewer people, labor is an expensive part of the equation. A lot of companies are going to… We see it, Amazon and others laying people off. And these are big weighty issues that are going to become more complicated because technology is moving at an exponential rate, but the sort of profit motive for people in business is pretty consistent.
So the question is how do you square all of this and still have a country where people feel like if they work hard, they can get ahead and live the life that they hope to live? Not an extravagant life, just a life where the basic things that they count on, a home, healthcare, some savings, the ability to afford the necessities of life, that they can believe that that’s going to be there for them and that their kids can get ahead. I mean, to me, it’s sort of elemental and it’s more complicated because we now have machines that can do so much.
And so, what we need, honestly, we said all the other qualities that might be important in this election, one I left out was just basic wisdom. Just the ability to bring the country along in these really complicated discussions and make them accessible and actually do something about some of these questions. I mean, America’s been a genius at lifting up leaders at perilous moments who were up to the task. And until I’m proven wrong, I’m hoping that that will be, unless and until, that that will be the case again and will produce a leader who is up to this moment.
BILL KRISTOL:
Well, that would be good. And we should come back and discuss this after the election. We’ll have to get together, we’ll discuss, we’ll look back. And one point Sosnik makes, maybe just close with one quick reflection on this, is very much along, follows from what you’ve just been saying is he thinks people are underestimating… He says November 3rd will be very exciting. Everyone will look at for 24 hours and we’ll have real effects if Democrats control the Senate and the House, et cetera, in terms of the next two years. And everyone will look at those effects quickly going forward for a bit. And then people will realize we’re in a totally different world after November 3rd than we would’ve been before. Do you agree with that? I mean the whole—
DAVID AXELROD:
Yes, yes.
BILL KRISTOL:
… question, the issues that are debated, the way in which they’re debated, people’s focus on things, people emerging and other people fading.
DAVID AXELROD:
Well, here’s the thing.
BILL KRISTOL:
I mean, do you agree that it really just—
DAVID AXELROD:
Listen, I think the thing that people are missing about the ’28 election is while Trump’s shadow will shape people’s choices, I don’t think people are going to be looking for the biggest, baddest anti-Trump troll. I think they’re going to be done with Trump. I think they’re going to recognize the blast radius from Trump is enormous. He has done essentially a tear-down. And the question is, what are we going to build? And if all you offer as a Democrat is we’re just going to restore everything he destroyed, that’s kind of a losing message because people weren’t that happy with what was here before Trump came. That’s one of the reasons Trump is there.
So you have to have a vision of what do we want to build? How do we build a better country that has a government that’s more resilient and resistant to corruption, more responsive to the concerns of everyday people, that is rationalized so that it operates in a 21st century way that’s smarter and more efficient, that incentivizes and catalyzes great thinking at the grassroot level, at the local level, at the state level, and encourages it at the private industry level? I think there’s going to be a thirst for that.
I think Trump, the big message out of the midterms, if it goes down as it could is, and it’s going to kill him and bother him and probably provoke worse behavior, is dude’s not that relevant anymore. That he is fading, that his time is coming to an end, that he is a lame duck. And never has there been someone less suited to accept that verdict than Donald Trump. But I think that’s the natural order of things.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, that’s so interesting. And obviously it affects, as you’ve been saying, the kind of Democratic candidates and messages. And then there’s another separate discussion, which we can’t have today at all, but we should have after the election. So how much of the Republican Party internalizes that and moves in that direction of a post-Trump Republicanism or, I don’t think it can go anti-Trump honestly, or how much of it is still wed to Trump because he’s an incumbent president and majority of people in Congress by now have made their careers being running with Trump.
DAVID AXELROD:
Well, yeah.
BILL KRISTOL:
And God knows his own administration people, a little hard for them to suddenly—
DAVID AXELROD:
And he will not want to be irrelevant.
BILL KRISTOL:
Right. So, I mean, the internal Republican dynamics could be really very interesting as well.
DAVID AXELROD:
I think both parties. And because of our system, the temptation is to go for the cheap thrill, cheap shot kind of stuff that will rally the base and thrill the base. We tried to resist that in 2008. We actually ran ads in Iowa with Republican legislators from Illinois talking about Barack Obama.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah.
DAVID AXELROD:
And people though we were crazy for doing it, but there was a hunger to get past the kind of scorched earth politics in Washington and that superseded, at least there was a constituency enough for it in the primary to supersede the sort of vengeance thirst about Bush and all of that and the war, and so on. So it’ll be interesting to see how all these candidates approach it.
BILL KRISTOL:
We will get together and see.
DAVID AXELROD:
I look forward to it.
BILL KRISTOL:
And David, thanks so much for taking the time today. This is really fascinating, and I think very enlightening discussion.
DAVID AXELROD:
Whether on a podcast or over a cup of coffee. Yeah.
BILL KRISTOL:
We’ll do both.
DAVID AXELROD:
I never turn a conversation with you down.
BILL KRISTOL:
Well, that’s nice of you. Or I with you, but we can do both.
DAVID AXELROD:
We will.
BILL KRISTOL:
Thanks, David, for joining me and thank you all for joining us on Conversations.
