Frank Luntz Reflects On Kamala Harris' Failed 2020 Presidential Run—And What That Means For 2024

2 months ago

Pollster Frank Luntz joins "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss how President Joe Biden stepping aside impacts the 2024 presidential race, and how voters feel about likely Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

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00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis with Forbes Breaking News. Joining me now is pollster

00:07and political consultant Frank Luntz. Frank, thanks for coming back once again.

00:12Thank you for having me. And I do want to compliment you. You've got a lot of viewers.

00:17I take a look and I realize that there are people that tune in and want to know what's going on. So

00:24congratulations on building that followership. Well, I really appreciate that. And I'm really

00:30grateful for you lending your perspective, your insight to our viewers, especially during this

00:36historic and unprecedented time, which are two phrases I keep saying, but it is true.

00:42So in the last 48 hours, President Joe Biden officially dropped out of the presidential race.

00:48And Vice President Kamala Harris is now the presumptive Democratic nominee.

00:52What do you make of all of this news? Well, first, I had concluded after the

00:58Republican convention that unless there was something extraordinary, that Donald Trump

01:04was going to be the next president if his opponent was Joe Biden. Well, guess what?

01:09Dropping out of the race is extraordinary. And as of this taping, you cannot call this race.

01:17It is unclear who's going to win. It is clear that the vote has been scrambled and that

01:24at least the participation, the actual voting may not change much. The people who supported

01:30Joe Biden are likely to support Vice President Harris and vice versa. But what has happened is

01:36that we've seen an impact in interest, which will have an impact in turnout. Younger women

01:43who looked at the current president as being too old and not exciting and did not particularly

01:49appreciate Trump's approach to politics or policy were likely to sit this campaign out.

01:56They won't. They're going to be involved. The African-American population who is giving Trump

02:03a look like no other Republican has received since Ronald Reagan in the 1980s,

02:09they're likely to go back to Harris. So this affects states like Georgia, North Carolina.

02:15It may put those states in play. The group that I'm following more than any other that I think

02:22will make the difference is union membership, not government unions and not teachers unions,

02:29but others. And you see this in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. The idea that the

02:36president of the Teamsters shows up and is given a primetime speech at the Republican convention.

02:42We've never seen this before. And I know because I do a lot of work on union issues. I've been

02:48involved now for what, 20 years in polling. The union leadership may be behind her 90 percent or

02:5585 percent, but the rank and file is not. And I actually think that she may be a worse candidate

03:04against Trump than Joe Biden was because he's got a very strong record and Biden relates to that vote

03:10and she may not. So we have re-scrambled the race. You cannot call it at this point. We know it's

03:17going to be close. We know that the winner is going to win maybe by one or two states because

03:22obviously the popular vote doesn't matter. And for people like me, an observer, this whole process

03:30is both the best of times and the worst of times. It's the best of times because I'm learning every

03:35day and it's the worst of times because I'm sleeping only two hours a day. I know we said in

03:41our group work chat, I wish we could go back to some precedented times to get maybe, you know,

03:48squeeze a nap in. That doesn't seem like the case as of now. But within the 24 hours of Biden

03:54dropping out, Kamala Harris did see a historic fundraising number, $81 million. She also saw

04:01this surge on social media from Gen Z. She really leaned into the brat summer that has been taking

04:07over social media. So do you think that this energized base will last until November A and B

04:14affect her in battleground states? It won't last until November, but it's going to last

04:20through the convention and beyond. Number one. Number two is I can't wait to see the Trump

04:26Harris debate. I'm offering anyone who can get me a front row seat to that a $10,000 donation. And I

04:33mean this, you name the charity, put me in the front row for that debate. It'll be a dangerous

04:39place to be because the two of them really don't like each other. And number three,

04:45that surge in energy has completely changed this election equation. Up until now, Donald Trump had

04:54the intensity on his side. If you were a Trump supporter, you're guaranteed to be a Trump voter.

05:00Joe Biden could not say that. Kamala Harris can say that, that if you like her, you probably love her.

05:09And you will definitely participate on election day. But there's so many questions that we still

05:20have. She's not been put to the test. She does not have a good favorability rating overall.

05:26Her job approval numbers were even worse than Joe Biden's. This 48 hours is redefining who she is

05:35and what she's about. But go back 72 hours and those were not, frankly, those are not

05:42electable numbers. And so things are changing every hour of every day. And I know that this

05:51interview that we do is relevant for right now, but I'm afraid to see it seven days from now

05:56because things could have completely changed between now and then. To your point, Biden's

06:04entire presidency, her approval ratings have trailed him largely. And aside from President

06:10Biden's concern about age and mental acuity, does she inherent the problems from his campaign,

06:17i.e. the border, i.e. inflation? And how does she distance herself from them in this campaign

06:23because she only has a few months left? It'll be almost impossible for her to distance herself

06:29on the immigration issue because that was actually her responsibility. And you can be

06:34sure that Trump's gonna be running ads of Joe Biden saying, this is my immigration czar,

06:39this is the person responsible for it. And then you're gonna see on the right side of the screen

06:44at night, all these illegal entries and the chaos on the border. She's going to have to own that.

06:57I don't see her being able to run away from it. That aside, she's gonna have an advantage that

07:03Biden did not have, which is among younger women and the abortion issue and abortion rights. She

07:10was outspoken in that. And I think that that's gonna help her generation of voters who prioritizes

07:18the abortion issue and shares her point of view. While it will turn off older voters who don't,

07:26they're not voting for her anyway. So the plus is abortion, the minus is immigration,

07:34and everything else will be whatever she says and does in the months to follow.

07:39If we take a stroll down memory lane and think about 2019 and the 2020 election, Kamala Harris

07:46dropped out of the presidential race before Iowa. So what do you think were her biggest mistakes of

07:51that campaign? And what does she need to switch because she does not have much runway left?

07:57Okay, I need to give you credit for this, which is that I've been on a number of shows and almost

08:02all the interviewers who've asked me these questions have forgotten or choose to forget

08:092019. It was a disaster for her. She raised tens of millions of dollars. She made a splash in the

08:16first debate by attacking Biden and trying to racialize the election. It's the only way you can

08:21call it because it was on the issue of busing and suggesting that Joe Biden didn't care about

08:27little black children. Everyone's forgotten that she didn't even make it to January.

08:35That Democrats, the people who are supposed to respond to that message, did not. And that

08:42her polling numbers, she's been the most unpopular vice president since Dan Quayle.

08:49And that's almost 40 years ago. So yeah, she does have a bad track record. I do understand

08:56that most Americans forget and that four years ago was a long time. But you can be sure that

09:04the Republicans and Trump are going to be reminding people of what they disliked about Harris.

09:10I just don't want to get trapped in the idea that just because she failed then,

09:15she's going to succeed now. I'm sorry, that she's going to fail now. And just because she's the

09:21flavor of the month right now, it doesn't mean that she won't fall into the same trap that she

09:25did in 2019. This is a very relevant conversation to have, but it's not happening on other news

09:32sources. And I'm glad that you raised it because it's important. I've seen some of the initial

09:41polling and she is getting Joe Biden's vote, plus a percent, but that's still not enough for her to

09:50win. But I'm also seeing the fundraising, the social media, the people signing up to join her

09:57campaign. And I'm looking at this and thinking, wow, this is something we've never seen before.

10:04So you got both sides of the argument and that viewers and people who are involved in this

10:10process deserve to hear both perspectives. And I don't know how to bring both perspectives,

10:16except for this conversation.

10:19And what do swing voters think aside from the historic numbers? She's also an apparatus of

10:26President Biden. So what are they thinking as her being the likely nominee?

10:31Well, swing voters are swing voters because they don't have an ideology. They look at the

10:36character traits and the attributes. They're simply not wedded to the Republican position

10:41or the Democratic position. That's first. Second is that they tend to be double haters,

10:46which is that they didn't like Joe Biden and they didn't like Donald Trump.

10:50She's got she doesn't have the baggage of Biden's age. And that's significant because that was the

10:55number one reason why these double haters did not like Joe Biden. But she does have the baggage

11:01of the Biden administration, the rate of inflation, the lack of affordability, the chaos at

11:07the border. But all this legislation that he did pass the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act,

11:14the Infrastructure Act. So with only into it 72 hours or 48 hours, we're just starting in this

11:24process. And the truth is, we don't know the truth. We don't know how people are going to break.

11:33I will figure this out very quickly. But I'm not going to rush to judgment because the swing voters

11:40themselves are not rushing to judgment. Frankly, it's dangerous to make any conclusion until after

11:47the Democratic Convention, because that speech will be watched by 10s of millions of people

11:53will be seen in parts by, I don't know, 50 million voters, 75 million. And it's only after that

12:01speech that we get a reset of this election. And from that point on, it's going to feel like World

12:07War One. This is going to be trench warfare with all these key states within a percent or two.

12:16Every word, every phrase, every statement will be twisted and turned and taken out of context.

12:22And the one thing that you haven't asked me is what is the impact of this on our democracy?

12:29And my response would be, the good news, more people are going to be involved,

12:35more people are going to be energized, more people are going to be participatory.

12:39The bad news is that from the campaigns itself, I think we're going to be doing more damage to

12:44the credibility and the the open mindedness of the country as we tear each other apart.

12:57It's really bad when you participate in such a negative way.

13:01What do you think the Republican Party is going to do going forward? Because you were in Milwaukee,

13:07you were at the RNC, and a lot of the speeches centered around President Biden and how the GOP

13:14platform is better suited than four more years of Biden. Now there's no Biden. So how does their

13:21messaging change within the next three and a half months? Well, first of all, I would change who

13:27they're targeting. They talk about blue collar, working class, I won't call them that. These are

13:32paycheck to paycheck voters. And that's how they should be looked at. People who if they lose their

13:38jobs, they could lose their houses, they would lose their cars, they could lose their American

13:44dream. And there are so many paycheck to paycheck voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

13:52And they don't want to be classified by class. They don't look at themselves that way.

13:56But this is how they live. And in the end, the Republican Party does have an agenda for them.

14:01And the vice president choice, JD Vance, comes from that group of people. And I think Vance is

14:09better at articulating what these paycheck to paycheck voters really think, really believe,

14:17and really want. On the other hand, Harris offers these voters a brand new approach

14:26to governing and a brand new look at what the Democratic Party really stands for.

14:33But we're still not going to know that until the convention itself. I was shocked at how many people

14:40of color addressed the GOP convention. I was shocked at how many non-politicians were invited

14:47to participate, and how open the Republican Party was towards union membership, towards the rank

14:54and file. This is not a Republican Party, I remember. This is not a Republican Party I'm

14:59familiar with. This is a Republican Party that for the first time wasn't drawing a line at roughly

15:0546% of the vote. They were drawing a line at a majority. It looked and felt and sounded much

15:14more American than anything that I've seen since Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

15:20If that's enough, we don't know. That still may not be enough, and it may be too new to too many

15:25people. But it was a very successful convention. Donald Trump had a very, very well-written 45

15:34minute speech. And then he blew it by using ad-libbing and jumping in and saying the stuff

15:41that belied his commitment to unity. And I don't even know if he hears it. I don't even know if he

15:48recognizes that when you make a tax against Nancy Pelosi, when you do the ad hominem that he is so

15:55well known for, that undermines his argument that this is a unified country and they're approaching

16:02America as one country. If he had stuck to his script, it would have been one of the best

16:09convention speeches of all time. He didn't. He went way too long. Our undecided voters punished

16:16him for it. And I think we're going to see the consequences of that over the coming weeks.

16:25Frank, in less than two weeks, we saw two historic events. One, Donald Trump survived

16:31an assassination attempt. Two, President Biden stepped out of the race. So given the seismic

16:38nature of these events, has everything we knew about the election or thought we knew about the

16:43election out the window now? Yes. I keep saying to people privately, and you're the first person

16:51going to acknowledge this too, I'm an idiot. I don't know right now. And nobody knows. And all

16:58these pontificators who said that this is, this is, yes, it's historic. Yes, we've never seen

17:04this before. But that's the point. We've never seen this before. So we need to listen and learn

17:11before we pontificate. And to see all these people on cable news, declaring how great the situation

17:22is. They don't know. They're speaking under their own preferences. They have no understanding of

17:29the electorate because we just don't know. And that's what I've been doing over the last 48 hours.

17:36That's why I'm so tired. I will have it figured out, I hope, by this weekend. But we are in uncharted

17:42territory. Half of the campaign has completely changed. The language that Donald Trump was going

17:49to use is no longer appropriate. You can't speak to Harris the same way you'd speak to Joe Biden.

17:56And the Trump campaign better figure that out because they're going to be punished if they don't.

18:01And quite frankly, those of us who pride ourselves in being able to prognosticate

18:08should be a little bit more quiet and a little bit more humble for a little while longer.

18:14Well, that's good advice, as always. Frank, as we all listen, as you learn, I hope you come back on

18:21and break down what you heard with us. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for having me.

Frank Luntz Reflects On Kamala Harris' Failed 2020 Presidential Run—And What That Means For 2024

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