(upbeat music)
- Hello and welcome to
Journal, I'm Steve Kendall.
The major political parties
have held their conventions,
and now they're getting an
earnest about Campaign 2020.
Here to talk about
how they got there,
where they are now, and
where we're gonna go
between now and November, is
Professor Melissa K. Miller
from the Department
of Political Science
at Bowling Green
State University.
Dr. Miller, welcome
to The Journal today.
- Great to be here, Steve.
- Now, we know who
the candidates are
finally after a long
trek through the summer.
Talk a little bit about how
each of the
candidates got there.
Obviously the democrats
had a lot of people
at the beginning and
there really wasn't
much doubt that Donald
Trump was gonna be
the republican nominee,
but talk a little
bit about how we got
to where we are right now.
- So I will actually start
with the republican side.
So there were several
challengers to Donald Trump,
but they really struggled
to get on the ballot
in any states; there
was such pushback.
The party has really become
the party of the President,
and that's not uncommon for
the incumbent president,
the identity of the party
really becomes Barack Obama
or becomes George W. Bush,
and that's happened
under President Trump.
Of the three republican
former office holders
who challenged the President,
only one of them, former
Massachusetts governor,
William Weld, won
a single delegate.
So that is, in essence, he
was unchallenged in the end.
So of course his
nomination was a given.
The interesting story is
really on the democratic side
where there was a really
diverse roster of candidates.
There were women, we had
an African American man,
Asian American man, a gay
man, an openly gay man,
we had Kamala Harris, who's
both black and Asian American,
so I could go on.
We saw a really diverse
list of candidates
on the democratic side.
And what happened was
that in those first two
all important Iowa and
New Hampshire contests,
Joe Biden did very poorly,
placing fourth in Iowa
and fifth in New Hampshire.
So it looked like this was
gonna be initially between
Pete Buttigieg, the
former mayor of South Bend
and Bernie Sanders.
And what happened is
Biden kept saying,
wait til South Carolina.
And at the time, I
remember thinking,
boy, you're not doing
well if you have to say,
wait til the third contest.
But I think what the
Biden team realized
was that the electorate
is very different
once you move on from a very
lily white caucus in Iowa
and a lily white primary
in New Hampshire.
That then when the contest
comes to South Carolina,
you get a much more
diverse electorate
with a sizable African
American population
and portion of that
democratic primary electorate
and that was gonna change
everything, and indeed it did.
Joe Biden definitely
benefited from congressman
Jim Clyburn endorsing him,
and it was just like
the floodgates opened
and suddenly all these
votes went to Joe Biden
and he was really
unstoppable after that.
And he just kept winning.
Sanders picked up a couple more,
but it was really pretty
clear fairly early on
that he had so much
momentum; Joe-mentum,
that's what they
called it at the time.
So he really, things
turned around for him
in South Carolina in
large part because
African American voters
then were able to
cast their ballots
in big numbers
for the first time, and
that changed everything.
- Yeah, because in some cases,
when you go through
that primary,
especially when you
don't do well in Iowa,
that basically takes a
few people out right away,
and then New Hampshire
tends to take people
out of the field.
And in his case, coming
in as sort of being
this guy who had been vice
president, been a senator,
was a long-time
establishment person
of the democratic party.
You almost wonder when he
kept saying South Carolina,
well, what's gonna happen there
'cause you've not done well,
and it was almost like it
was extremely disappointing,
it was like
under-performing for him,
and yet, South
Carolina, as you said,
turned that all around.
- That's right, and I
think people had really
kind of written off his
candidacy at that point.
Looking back, he had been
attacked on the debate stage
throughout the debates,
and one of the common
refrains was, like,
our party needs to move forward,
and he was perceived as sort
of a candidate of the past,
and Biden really liked
taking on that mantle of
being Obama's partner in the
Obama-Biden administration,
but it was deemed to be
sort of an outdated message,
it's time for a new crop,
and most of his competitors,
Elizabeth Warren and Bernie
Sanders side were much younger,
but in the end,
it wasn't enough.
None of those others,
save for Sanders,
I would argue, really
caught enough fire broadly
to get the nomination.
So it came down to
Sanders and Biden,
and Biden had far more support.
Sanders definitely had support
within the black community,
but it was tripped by Biden's
and that made a big difference.
- And I guess, too, if
you look at, as you said,
that wide range of candidates,
were they perceived
as maybe being just
narrow in their focus and they
didn't have a broad appeal?
Like maybe Biden did or
Sanders to some degree,
was that part of it?
Or just because they were new
and Biden had this name
that a lot of people knew;
they knew Joe Biden, he
didn't have to do well
in New Hampshire
and Iowa obviously.
- You know, I think that really,
what was really
key in terms of how
the democratic
primary electorate was
viewing the candidates
and trying to
sort through the candidates
was that there were
several who were really
in the moderate lane.
And Joe Biden was the one,
he was the key candidate
in that moderate line.
I would add Kamala
Harris in there, too.
Amy Klobuchar, US
senator for Minnesota.
And then there was
another pack of candidates
that were vying for
the progressive lane.
There you had most
notably Bernie Sanders
and US Senator Elizabeth
Warren of Massachusetts.
And so that's where,
and you know what,
party primaries, that's what
they're about, in a way.
It's about the
electorate getting to
look at the candidates
and decide which way is
the party going to go?
Is it going to go
in this direction
with this candidate's platform
or this other direction?
And for a while now,
what we've seen is that
the major fixture within
the democratic party
is between moderates like
Biden, Harris, Klobuchar,
and progressives
like Bernie Sanders,
Elizabeth Warren, although
they didn't run for President,
I would put congresswoman
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,
Ilhan Omar, there are others
that are in that camp.
And in 2020, voters decided
and picked that moderate lane.
It gets interesting, and
we can talk about it later
because the republicans
and the President,
no big surprise, are trying
to portray the Biden ticket
as being very radical,
way to the far left.
But in fact, they were
the moderate choice,
and Biden and then Harris
because she was chosen
ended up on top.
- Okay, when we come back,
let's talk about that
because that obviously
it looks like
is the way they're trying,
well, especially Kamala Harris,
the idea is to make her look
far far far far to the left,
and what you're saying is
maybe that's not
the case exactly.
So we'll be back
in just a moment
with Dr. Melissa Miller from
Bowling Green State University
here on The Journal.
Thank you for staying with
us here on The Journal,
our guest is Dr.
Melissa Miller from
Bowling Green State
University's department
of Political Science.
And we touched on the
end of that last segment
about the fact that the
democrats have chosen two
very moderate candidates out
of that group that they had.
Kamala Harris, not
necessarily the favorite
of some of the people
in democratic party
because to them, she's
too far to the center.
And yet, she's caught
in interesting because
on the other hand,
the idea will now be
from the republican
side to paint her
as being extremely radical left,
even though that's not how she's
portrayed in her own party.
So talk a little about
how that's gonna play out
over the next few weeks,
the next couple of months.
- So one thing to note
is that having a moderate
at the top of the
ticket, two moderates
for President and Vice
President isn't a bad way
to approach a general
election where
you're now no longer trying
to win the nomination
among the democratic base;
you're trying to
appeal to all voters,
you're trying to peel away
as many independent voters
who are in the middle,
and possibly some
disaffected Trump supporters.
So in some respects,
it's possible,
and I would say debatable
because I talk to people
about this all the
time and they say
Bernie would be the
better candidate,
he excites more
enthusiasm and so forth.
But typically what political
science shows is that
if the candidate that gets
nominated isn't moderate,
and this goes for the
democratic or republican side,
once they start campaigning
for the general election,
they tack to the center.
So frankly, if they really
are too far to the left,
they try to move to the center.
Well, in this case,
as you said, Steve,
the progressive
wing of the party,
I think it was disappointed
both from the choice of
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,
but has firmly gotten
behind the ticket.
Sort of unified with
the goal of the party
defeating Donald
Trump in November.
You also mentioned
that the Trump team,
and republicans more generally,
are going to try,
and have begun to try
to portray both Kamala
Harris and Joe Biden
as really radical
left, far left.
We'll see whether that works.
Viewers out there
watching your show
I'm sure a little more
up-to-date on public affairs
and more knowledgeable
perhaps of the candidates.
But Joe Biden, like I
said, was a disappointment
to the far left in
the democratic party
'cause he wasn't
deemed radical enough.
So it'll be interesting to see.
Now, one of the arguments being
made by the Trump campaign
is that Biden is a
puppet of the far left.
So they're kind of trying
different strategies,
one is, oh, Biden's
a radical leftist.
Another argument is, well, he's
a puppet of the radical left
so he's just being used
by the radical left.
I gotta tell you, Steve, so far,
and it really came to
a fever pitch of course
at the Republican
National Convention,
but a lot of that criticism
of Biden over the summer
wasn't really sticking.
It wasn't really
resonating in a way
that really moved
the poll numbers.
So we'll see if the
republicans really re-focus
their message and get
some traction out of that.
- From the republican
side of things,
right now is that the
only focus they have?
What are the messages
that the President
has to portray to
make his campaign work
the way he wants it to work?
What do they have to
do with Donald Trump?
Normally the incumbent
President usually has
a lot of advantage.
And with COVID-19, with
all the other things
that have happened, does
he have the advantage
that a typical incumbent
going for a second term
would have here?
- It's certainly much
more difficult than
incumbents in modern
political history
because of the global pandemic.
We've never had a
presidential race
run under these circumstances,
and the huge downturn
in the economy.
So it's very difficult
circumstances
for which there is no playbook.
There's no template
for, and I mean,
that's what consultants do
and that's what campaigns do;
they look to prior
similar campaigns
to try to figure out what
strategies worked then,
and there is no
playbook like that.
So I think, I'll say it
first about President Trump,
and then I'll apply it to Biden.
But a key challenge
for the Trump campaign
is how much do they just
try to tear down Joe Biden
in order to win?
So how much do they
focus on this message of
he's too radical, or he's a
puppet of the radical left.
Throw in crime and law and
order, he's weak on crime,
we'll have violence
in the street.
We saw a lot of that, that
this is the scary America
that we'll see if
Joe Biden is elected.
Versus how much do they
play up the president,
his record, going on his
record of things like
appointing
conservative justices,
cracking down on free
trade and getting tough
with America's trade
partners and the like.
So it was really
interesting in Trump's
acceptance speech on Thursday
night at the convention
that there was like a State
of the Union portion to it
where he really listed off
all those accomplishments.
That came at the beginning.
The whole second half was
very heavy anti-democrats,
anti-Biden.
How to get that mixed right,
it's the challenge of every
presidential campaign.
So he's got that challenge.
I would predict that
we're gonna see a lot
of tearing down Joe Biden.
They haven't really
settled on what is that
negative message going to be?
They've been experimenting
with various things.
I gotta tell you that
what the research shows
is that a negative
message about an opponent
tends to work if it reinforces
an existing narrative
about the candidate.
And I think that's
the problem with this
Biden is a puppet
of the radical left.
That is not an existing
narrative about Joe Biden.
We went through many
months of complaints
that he wasn't
progressive enough.
So you can see there's
a challenge there.
And I'll just quickly say Joe
Biden has the same challenge.
To what extent does he offer
a program for the future,
a program for battling
the coronavirus,
rebuilding the
economy and so forth,
versus focus on
people's reservations
and worries and concerns
and fears about Trump,
and kinda tearing
down the President.
They both have to try
to thread that needle,
and I tell ya, we're not
gonna know who did it best
until after this
election has decided.
- Yeah, and we're gonna go to
a break here in just a moment,
and I guess we'll
never know for sure,
if COVID-19 doesn't happen,
is this even a race?
Does Trump win without even
having to go and vote himself,
because he was on a roll,
basically he was on a roll
until this, and if
you look at that,
and maybe we can touch
more in detail later.
However you wanna portray the
way he's handled COVID-19,
and some people say
it's been wonderful,
on the other side says,
no, it's been terrible.
But without that
in the equation,
he's an incumbent running
on what would perceived
as a good economy.
- That's right, and so
I'll just quickly say
before the break that one
of the number one factors
that political scientists use
to predict the outcome
of presidential elections
is where things
stand in the economy.
And so without COVID, without
a surge in unemployment
and the like, Trump was
actually in pretty good position
with the caveat that his
popularity remains very low.
So it was gonna be
a little bit tricky,
but so much easier,
COVID totally complicates
his re-election for sure.
- Now another variable in
this strange year of 2020.
Okay we'll be back in just
a moment with more from
Dr. Melissa Miller from the
Department of Political Science
here at Bowling Green State
University on The Journal.
Back in a moment.
Thank you for staying
with us here on Journal.
Our guest is Dr. Melissa Miller
from Bowling Green
State University,
and we've talked about how
everybody got to this point,
we're roughly two months
out from election day.
Where are people gonna go now?
Where are the two
campaigns going to go?
We talked a little bit
about their messages.
Their strategies
and this odd thing
where you can't hold
big campaign events,
even going door to door,
which is the staple of
especially local elections.
All these things are the
traditional way of campaigning
are kind of influx too,
so how do they go about
managing campaigning
for presidential
election in this now
almost virtual environment
that we have to live in?
- Well, as I said before,
there's no template for how to
do this and win an election,
so really all bets are
off as to how they do it.
I think the President
will probably continue
to hold more of these
face-to-face events,
as we saw at the White
House on the final night
of the Republican
National Convention,
which of course creates a lot
of criticism and blow back
from the democratic side
and negative headlines about
folks being unmasked and
not socially distanced,
but it appears that the
President is willing
to take those risks to
have those live crowds.
And it does make a
difference, of course.
I mean, it makes for
a more exciting event,
and I don't expect to see
anything along those lines
from the democrats.
It would be entirely
inconsistent with
their message so far.
The masking that Joe
Biden has prominently,
he and Dr. Jill Biden have worn
at every public appearance,
I mean, I wouldn't
expect to see that.
Now, what I would
expect to see is
both sides, and if I were
advising either of them,
I would say, maybe
hold smaller events,
but try to create
sort of made for TV
or made for social media
moments that can go viral,
that you can push
out on social media
because honestly, social
media played an outside role
in 2016 in that election.
It's probably gonna play
an even bigger role in 2020
when candidates can't bring
their supporters together,
so I'd expect a lot of that.
And third, I would
look for those debates.
We've got three presidential
debates coming up,
plus a vice presidential debate.
That's the standard four
debates during the fall season,
and those, like the conventions,
I think will refocus
public attention
on the two candidates, the
differences between them,
and if 2016 is any indication,
I think you'll see high
viewership for those.
Again, it's because
there's not a lot on,
people don't have their
typical sports to watch,
so we may see that
presidential debates
get a little bit
more viewership.
They will perhaps have some
outsized importance this year.
- Now, when we talk
about dealing with
the way we've dealt
with the pandemic,
and I know there's gotta
be a ton of research
and it's ongoing, is it a
good thing for the President
to have coronavirus even
be in the news at all?
I know he's making
a point by saying,
the way he's
conducting his events,
which are basically,
in some cases,
fewer masks than the other
side would like to see.
There are two bases
here obviously.
One is coronavirus
isn't a thing,
the other one is,
yeah, it's a big thing.
So is he playing to
his base by kind of
using that as a wedge sort
of topic for this or not?
- Well, I think,
here's the problem,
here's the challenge
that the coronavirus
poses to the president.
One is just the tens
of thousands of lives,
over 180,000 lost now at the
time of us taping this segment.
And the problem is
that the President
is emphasizing some
of the steps he took
at the beginning to
try to keep the virus
off of our shores for
as long as he could.
Efforts to try to get
ventilators and support,
so he's really
pushing the positive,
here are these
positive things I did.
At the same time,
Americans lives have been
really disrupted and
continue to be disrupted.
So that's what
makes it difficult.
It's harder to spin because
it's something that is
affecting us here today.
Normally, Steve, I
join you in the studio,
which I love to do.
But we are socially distant,
actually miles away
from each other
conducting the interview.
So I think the coronavirus
is definitely problematic,
and on the democratic
side I would say that
while the violence that
has been in the streets
of Portland and more
recently in Kenosha,
it's nothing, I'm not
at all saying that
the democrats created that.
That's a whole other
segment we can do,
but any time there's violence,
someone being shot in
the street, at a protest,
or an officer being shot,
or whether it's
a Trump supporter
or a Black Lives
Matter protestor
who's the victim
in this violence,
that's not good for
the Biden campaign
because it feeds into
the narrative that
there's lawlessness.
The President is
saying you need me,
I'm so strong on law and order.
Although it should
be pointed out,
and the democrats are
trying to do that,
that this is Trump's
America, not Biden's America.
So boy, it's complicated.
But I would say that
the coronavirus,
the protests and some of
the violence we've seen
around these protests are
problematic in different ways
for each of the candidates.
- And you make a good
point because I know,
I saw this morning
a Biden ad that said
you're unsafe in
Donald Trump's America.
And at the same time you
have Donald Trump saying,
you're going to be even less
safe in Joe Biden's America.
So it's funny how
we're gonna fight over
who's gonna be worse
for the country.
I mean, it's kind
of an interesting,
which as you said,
negative advertising this,
but this is an interesting
one 'cause yeah,
it's bad now, but you'll
be a lot worse off
when it comes to violence.
That's the Trump thing,
and then Biden is
look what you have.
- Yeah, and I was gonna
say, this is not like
1984's morning in America
when Reagan ran that
very beautiful extreme,
goosebump-inducing ad
Morning in America, this
is the opposite of that.
- And I guess if we look
at presidential elections,
each of them, for the most part,
develop their own unique look,
especially after the fact.
We probably look at 16 and say,
well, that was
different than 12 was.
So I guess 20's gonna be one
of those when I look back
and go, this is one different
than we've ever seen before,
but we're starting to say
that now every four years
about elections that, oh,
here's a presidential election
unlike any other
one we've ever had.
And I guess that's just
the new normal for that.
- It is, although
I gotta tell you,
2020 it is the most different
because of the pandemic.
So forget the themes
and everything,
but when you can't even go
door-to-door as you point out,
which is vitally important
especially for local candidates.
But also for
presidential candidates,
they can't send their
supporters door-to-door
in states like Ohio and Michigan
where this battle will
be really waged and won.
So it really is truly different
so I'm gonna weigh in
on the side of yes,
this is very different than
anything we've seen before.
- We've got just a
couple of minutes;
let's talk a little
bit about Ohio's role
in this election 'cause
I know Ohio has been
a bellwether for who gets
elected for a lot of years.
Are we still in that mode?
Is that who we are yet in Ohio?
- You know, I like to
remind viewers that
Ohio still holds the best
record of picking presidents.
The fact that Ohio
voted for Trump
and the electoral votes
for Ohio went to Trump
is just very consistent
with this record
that goes all the
way back to 1896,
which is Ohio has the best
record of picking the winner.
And you have to go back to
1960 to find an election
where Ohio picked the loser.
So in 1960, Ohio picked
Kennedy, I'm sorry, Nixon,
voted for Nixon and gave
the electoral college
votes to Nixon, and Kennedy won.
But where people are saying,
oh, but Ohio is not really
a bellwether
anymore, it's because
the vote percentage
was eight points
in favor of the president,
which was much bigger,
way bigger than Trump's
popular vote, which
he didn't even win.
So that's where
Ohio in 2016 perhaps
seemed to be
getting out of step.
I would argue though that
it's entirely possible Ohio,
and I check the polls not daily,
and I don't check every
single poll that comes out,
but I look at that
average poll of polls
to see about twice a week,
and Ohio is such a toss-up.
It is possible that everything
will come down to Ohio.
It truly is possible that
that's what could happen,
so I encourage folks
to keep your eyes
certainly on Pennsylvania,
Michigan, and Wisconsin,
sort of the big three,
the golden three,
that delivered the upper
midwest and the presidency
to Donald Trump,
but in some ways,
Ohio has been more of
a toss-up than, say,
Pennsylvania has
in recent polls,
which are just a snapshot,
but I think, again,
this campaign will be
decided in the midwest.
And Ohio, Michigan,
Pennsylvania, Wisconsin
will be right there in the mix.
- Great, well, we're right
up to our time limit here.
One thing that we'll
have you back on
I'm sure between
now and election day
at least once or twice,
one of the things we'll
talk about then will be
when will we know who
has won the presidents,
because that's a
question out there,
and we don't really have time
to dig into it right now,
but that's the
other part of this;
it probably won't be
on election night.
- No, I would say
fasten your seat belts,
it could be a week
or two or three
before we know the outcome.
- All right, okay,
well Dr. Melissa Miller
from Bowling Green
State University,
thank you very much, I
appreciate you being here,
and I'm sure we'll be in touch
between now and November,
so thank you again
for being on with us.
- Sounds good, thanks Steve.
- You can check
us out at wbgu.org
and of course watch us
every week on WBGU PBS,
we'll see you again next
time on The Journal.
(upbeat music)
