Amy Walter:
This is something clearly the Biden campaign is seeing too. This isn't just in public polls.
There's a reason that the vice president has been spending as much time as she has been at historically Black colleges. The president himself has been out speaking to Black voters in key swing states now for months, that this slippage is as much about enthusiasm as anything else.
As you're seeing, while Trump has picked up some support, there are a lot of people that — who are sitting on the sidelines, who are saying, maybe I'm going to vote for a third-party candidate, or maybe I'm going to stay home.
And when you talk to Democratic strategists, what they will tell you is, the real gap, those voters who are really deciding whether they're going to vote or not, third party, maybe Trump, overwhelmingly are younger voters. That's the biggest — the generation gap, this one Democratic strategist said, is the real significant driver right now of Black vote, different between, say, 2020 or 2016 and this upcoming election.
And getting those younger voters engaged is really challenging, not just because these voters may not be impressed with Biden. They don't like Trump necessarily either, but they're also feeling that the institution itself, the political institutions, have really failed them or they don't see any reason to be involved there, so that big, big, big worry if you're the Democrats…
Sophia Cai:
Yes, it's a good question.
So I think it's twofold. On the one hand, the Trump campaign knows that they're not going to win 20 percent, 30 percent, as they're saying publicly. I mean, it's just nonsense. But even if they're able to get 1 to 2 percent more than the 9 percent that they got last time, specifically in those swing state cities like Detroit and Atlanta, then that is within a margin that could move enough voters, it could change the result of the election in that — in those states.
And so their objective is to get that marginal vote and also to make the Biden campaign sweat, to force them to spend more resources shoring up Biden's coalition of minority voters.
Amy Walter:
This is really not a race about ideology or policy. It's about revenge. And the revenge is on the part of Donald Trump, as well as Kevin McCarthy, who was the former speaker, of course. Bob Good, the incumbent Congressman, has crossed them both, and they both want to exact a price for that.
Donald Trump, the way he — the way Bob Good crossed Donald Trump is that he endorsed Ron DeSantis in the presidential race. Now, when Ron DeSantis dropped out, he went and endorsed Donald Trump. It doesn't matter. You have crossed Donald Trump, and, for that, you will pay a price.
Now, look, there are members of the right who are coming to Bob Good's defense, so it is not that clean of a separation that's sort of Bob Good out on an island by himself. But it tells you a lot about fealty to Donald Trump and what Donald Trump's decision to go in after this one House member — it's not going to make any difference in terms of the makeup of Congress.
The person who would replace him is equally conservative. It's just sending a message to other Republicans that there is a price to pay for being disloyal.
Sophia Cai:
So, this cycle, more so than '22, the Trump campaign and Trump himself has been a lot more cautious in terms of who they endorse and when they endorse.
We know that Trump has been waiting a lot longer to endorse in competitive Republican primaries. For instance, in Montana, he waited to endorse Tim Sheehy over a more conservative, more MAGA candidate, Matt Rosendale. In Nevada, he waited to endorse Sam Brown over Jeff Gunter, who was his own ambassador to Iceland.
These are some examples of Trump picking better candidates who have military backgrounds and a better chance of winning. And for Trump, he likes to win. I think that's ultimately what it comes down to. And even downballot, we see him endorsing the day before some of these primaries, just the day before. That doesn't really give these candidates a lot of room to really flaunt that endorsem*nt.
