In this exclusive interview, Becket Adams, Senior Journalist and Program Director at NJC, delves into the intricate dynamics of the upcoming U.S. Election 2024. With polling data revealing shifting voter trends, particularly the surprising support for Donald Trump among Black men and Kamala Harris’s strong backing from white women, Adams offers insightful analysis on what these trends mean for both candidates. He explores the implications of third-party candidates, the evolving perceptions of Indian American voters, and the potential impact of international actors like the UK’s Labour Party on the election landscape. Join us for a deep dive into the strategies, challenges, and prospects facing Trump and Harris as they vie for the presidency in a pivotal election year.
#USElection2024 #BecketAdams #KamalaHarris #DonaldTrump #ElectionAnalysis #VoterTrends #PoliticalInsights #ThirdPartyCandidates #IndianAmericanVoters #UKLabourParty #WomenInPolitics #BlackMenVote #PoliticalStrategies #PresidentialRace #Vote2024
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#USElection2024 #BecketAdams #KamalaHarris #DonaldTrump #ElectionAnalysis #VoterTrends #PoliticalInsights #ThirdPartyCandidates #IndianAmericanVoters #UKLabourParty #WomenInPolitics #BlackMenVote #PoliticalStrategies #PresidentialRace #Vote2024
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00:00Hello, I'm Prerna Chandeli, and I've been joined by Beckett Adams. He's the program
00:08director of the National Journalism Center, a columnist for The Hill, National Review,
00:13and Washington Examiner. Welcome, Beckett.
00:15Thanks for having me.
00:17Let's get right into it. Now we're heading very close to the elections, and it's just
00:21less than two weeks left. And we get a lot of polls that suggest that Kamala Harris is
00:26doing really well with white women, whereas Donald Trump is doing really well with black
00:31men. So what do you take of these polls? And what do you think, where these candidates
00:35stand in terms of their chances of winning this election?
00:40First things first, one thing I learned from the 2016 presidential election is never get
00:44too comfortable with your predictions. Anything can happen. There's a very famous cliche that
00:49it all comes down to voting. But cliches exist for a reason, and it really does come down
00:53to voting. Right now, polls are not great for Kamala Harris. I would say the wind is
00:58more or less out of her sails. She was sort of coasting on this idea of a joy campaign.
01:02It's not there anymore. At this point, this has been a huge problem for her throughout
01:07the election, is that she's been relatively substance-free. It's been very much sort of
01:12vibes-based, as the millennials say. It's been very much a sort of feeling-motivated
01:18campaign. Again, they've really sort of leaned into this joy idea. But then when people sit
01:22her down and try to pin her down on the specifics of policy, she doesn't offer up a lot of details.
01:27She doesn't offer up a lot of specifics. She falls back on two main things, one being,
01:32I'm not Donald Trump, and the second point being much less forcefully, I'm not Joe Biden.
01:37And that's not really something people can rally around. You've got to give voters something to
01:41vote for, not simply something to vote against. Again, I think we saw that in 2016. Hillary
01:46Clinton's big failing, in my eyes, I covered her campaign that year, is that she did not
01:52really give voters something to vote for. She merely gave them something to vote against.
01:56And as we know now, that didn't really work. So the polls, and this is the other thing too,
02:00polling has been, I would say, disastrously bad for at least the last 20 years. This is not tied
02:05to any one party. It's not, oh, polling's bad for Republicans or polling's bad for Democrats.
02:09It's been bad for several decades at this point. And it's been very unpredictable. So people will
02:15say one thing and then the outcome will be different. One thing we saw again in 2016,
02:20and I think we saw very big in 2020, is the issue of voters being shy about wanting to admit who
02:26they're going to vote for. So 2004, 2008, people were probably a little more open about saying,
02:31I'm going to vote for Senator John McCain, or I'm going to vote for Senator Barack Obama.
02:352016, when you're being told every day that Donald Trump is literal Adolf Hitler,
02:41a lot of people were really shy about saying to a perfect stranger on the phone, I'm voting for
02:45literal Hitler. So you had issues where polling was off, where people were not revealing what
02:49their actual preferences were. There was one polling firm, and here's a fun little anecdote,
02:53there was one polling firm in 2016 that actually got very close to predicting correctly that Trump
02:58was going to win the election and by which margins he was going to win it by. And they
03:01actually had a trick, which is when they called to poll people, instead of asking, who are you
03:05planning to vote for? They would ask, who do you think your neighbor is planning to vote for?
03:10And everyone felt comfortable answering that question. And so naturally, they got much better
03:14answers. That was called the Trafalgar Group. That was the name of that organization. So all this is
03:18going back to the main question about polls. So Harris is flipping with black voters, and then
03:23she's doing well with white suburban women. And Trump is actually picking up the black vote far
03:28more than any recent Republican candidate. And I think this goes to the very sort of simple,
03:34but nebulous idea that I think a lot of campaigns miss, which is people vote for policies,
03:39and they also vote for personalities. So if you can offer one of those or both of them,
03:45you will be solid if you're light on both. So Harris is light on substance. And in terms
03:49of personality, I think we got a good example of that last night at the Al Smith dinner,
03:54which is a very popular charitable event that happens during presidential years. People come
04:00together. It's kind of a roast, a poke fun. She skipped it. That's the sort of thing that voters
04:04see that looks a little lame, a little weak. And then on top of that is the fact that people can't
04:09really tell you what does she actually stand for or support. But I think she did send a video out,
04:14saying that, you know, she did, but that's not that's not nobody has ever done that before.
04:19And if you watch the video, it wasn't in the spirit of the dinner. The dinner is a roast
04:22where they get together like Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Actually, it was very funny. They kind of
04:27poke fun at each other. There's a little teeth or a little, you know, a little bit of sting to some
04:31of the jokes. The jokes are pretty well written. Everyone has a good time. People are up on a
04:34dais. There's alcohol. Everyone's drinking, having a good time. She sends in this prerecorded video
04:39with a character from like 2005 from Saturday Night Live. That wasn't funny, by the way,
04:44when I was the target demographic in 2005. And I didn't think it was funny then. It's not really
04:48funny in 2024. And it's so it's kind of stale. They didn't really tell jokes, political talking
04:54points. So it wasn't even the spirit of the dinner. So sending in the video that goes to
04:58the point where the personality like what is Kamala's personality? I think there's this one
05:03thing that she I think she should have leaned into, which is cooking. She loves cooking. She's
05:08great at cooking. If you watch any videos for cooking, she's actually really relaxed and
05:11comfortable and personable. You don't see that on the campaign trail. You certainly don't see that
05:16in interviews. And that's on top of the fact that there's not a lot of policy substance. So people
05:21vote for policy and personality. And right now, she's a little lacking on that, which may explain
05:25what we're seeing in the polls. And just okay, right. And just talking about the, you know,
05:31the polls that says that Donald Trump is doing really well with black men, like you suggested.
05:37Do you think somewhere the Obama effect is diminishing? Or is it something to do with
05:41Kamala Harris that they don't want to vote? Or what is it? I think it's three things. One is
05:47Jimmy Carville is an old school sort of infamous democratic strategist in the 1990s coined the
05:53famous phrase, it's the economy stupid. And it gets to a very simple idea, which is, again,
05:57people vote with their pocketbooks, they care about their income, they care about their their
06:02standard of living, they care about eating and feeding their family. And Donald Trump,
06:07love him or hate him, when he was president, things were cheaper, gas was cheaper, food was
06:10cheaper. People remember that people know this new crew has come in on the Biden and Harris and
06:15things are very expensive, work is scarcer, jobs are scarcer, and things cost more. So again,
06:22people vote with their pocketbook, it's the economy stupid. That is a big probably goes
06:26a big way towards explaining the success Trump has had. The other thing too,
06:31as you can say, is it about Barack Obama is about Harris, I think Harris is a relative unknown. She
06:35was only in the Senate for two years before she became vice president. She became vice president
06:39after she failed hard out of the Democratic primary, she didn't even make it to the Iowa
06:44caucuses. And now she's a Democratic nominee without a single vote being cast for her in any
06:48traditional primary. People don't really know a lot about her. She talks a little bit about now
06:52her work as a district attorney in California. But that's not really a story that your average
06:57voter knows a lot about. She's still kind of a question mark to a lot of people.
07:01Donald Trump, on the other hand, has been in the public eye since the 1970s. He's been on
07:05television, he's been in movies, he's part of professional wrestling. I mean, he's been all
07:09over the place. He's a known entity, people know what they're going to get with them.
07:13And then the third thing too, is about Barack Obama. And I think what appears to be his inability
07:19to rally the troops, for me is the continuation of a theme, which is Barack Obama is very good
07:25at campaigning for Barack Obama, and has always actually been pretty terrible at campaigning for
07:29other people. You look at how the Democratic Party performed under his administration,
07:35whether it was in the midterms or the 2016 presidential election, he doesn't actually
07:39carry a lot of, there's not a lot of bite to his endorsements, doesn't actually carry a lot of
07:45weight. People like him, but they are very much willing to say no thank you to the people he
07:51endorses and tries to foist on them. So they're putting him out there on the campaign trail.
07:56I don't, I think that's either a net negative, or it just won't do anything, because again,
08:00people like him, but they don't care who he likes. And he's never, in his very short, and that's the
08:05funny thing too, he was president for eight years, but before that, senator for a half a term. He has
08:09a short political career. In his very short political career, he has a terrible batting
08:14average in terms of winning endorsements. People don't really care about his opinion.
08:19They like him though. Right. Okay, so just talking about personalities and candidates,
08:24Kamala Harris's campaign team has been really negative about these third-party candidates,
08:29and you know, especially talking about Jill Stein, where they released this video saying
08:33that voting for Jill Stein is like voting for Donald Trump. Do you think this is true, and
08:38where do you think is the two-party system going in America, and do you think voters should have
08:42more options in terms of candidates when they're voting? I'll take the first part first. No,
08:49voting for Jill Stein is not voting for Donald Trump. That's an old argument a lot of people
08:53use, which is, if you don't vote for my candidate, you are clearly voting for their candidate. It's
08:57like, no, a vote for not someone isn't necessarily a vote for another person. I don't buy that by
09:03not voting for Kamala, you are thereby voting for Trump. I think that's more of a sort of
09:08emotional blackmail, which has always annoyed me to a degree, especially somebody who hasn't voted
09:13since 2012, I guess. Really? Okay, that's a different conversation. No, no, well, not that
09:21I've forgotten, nor I don't believe in voting. I love voting, and I take it very seriously,
09:24which is why I haven't voted since 2012, because nobody has earned my vote. That's a different
09:28conversation. No, voting for her is not the same thing as voting for Trump, first of all. Secondly,
09:34what is really interesting about that ad is not just, it's not the ad itself, it's the subtext
09:38of the ad. The fact that they're even talking about Jill Stein tells me that they are worried
09:42in scrambling. It would be the equivalent of George W. Bush running ads against Ralph Nader
09:47in 2008, pardon me, 2000 or 2004. Ralph Nader is a non-entity. You don't worry about the guy who
09:53has no chance. The reason that they're going against Jill Stein is it tells me that they
09:57are seeing something in their internals that aren't available to the public. They're seeing
10:01something that is scaring them to the point where they're willing to spend time, and more importantly,
10:06campaign resources, attacking a candidate who has no chance of doing it, maybe siphoning a little
10:11bit of the vote, but not really. We're not talking about, this isn't Ross Perot in the 90s.
10:16She's not going to split up the Democratic coalition and thereby hand Trump the nomination.
10:20What it tells me is that they are scrambling, this is panic mode, and they're throwing anything at
10:25the wall that may stick, including going after Jill Stein, which is, to me, it's not even punching
10:31down, it's punching sideways in the dark. So no, it's not voting for Donald Trump. The fact that
10:36they're going after her actually makes the Harris campaign look scared. And then in terms of the
10:42number of parties, I wish, so yeah, going back to the fact that I haven't voted since 2012, yeah,
10:46I would like another option because the two parties that are currently in power have not
10:52since 2012 earned my vote. I am dismayed that these are the candidates that we have. This is the
11:00third election in a row where neither party has offered me a person that I believe deserves or
11:05takes seriously the responsibility. So it might be nice to have a third option. I don't know when
11:08it's going to happen. There used to be several options in the United States back in the day, but
11:13along the lines, the two parties sort of siphoned enough power onto themselves that
11:17a third party run hasn't been a realistic thing, gosh, since the 1930s or the 1940s.
11:24I would like another option though, yes. I don't know how that happens though,
11:28not with the power and the influence and the money that these two parties have.
11:32Okay, so sticking to the two parties that we have right now, Donald Trump's immigration policies,
11:39it talks about mass deportation. So what do you think, do you think legal immigrants should also
11:45be worried about this mass deportation because some of them are major taxpayers and are
11:50highly skilled workers? What do you think of this policy? If I were a legal or an illegal immigrant,
11:59it would make sense to be worried. I would not, what's the word I'm looking for, ridicule
12:06either one for being worried because you don't know. This is the thing with Donald Trump
12:09that actually we saw a lot under George W., which they called a cowboy diplomacy.
12:14And it worked well for foreign policy because countries like China and Russia kind of would
12:18sit back because they're not sure what this guy's going to do because he's kind of a cowboy. We
12:23don't know if he's kind of crazy or we'll go half cock. Trump is like that. It's a lot of sort of
12:28cowboy diplomacy where he says this if I'm illegal or illegal immigrant, kind of like,
12:33are you going to do this? Now, from my personal perspective, I think realistically it won't
12:38happen. First of all, it's a logistic nightmare. I don't think we have the manpower or the know-how
12:43to even do a mass. It's a continent-sized country with 350 million people, not counting the illegal
12:50immigrants. The idea that you're going to mobilize enough people to actually do mass
12:54deportations to me seems unrealistic, considering we can barely keep our bridges and roads in
12:59operating condition. The other thing, too, is he's going to run into all sorts of legal obstacles and
13:07a variable network of legislators and lawmakers who will stand up and they will push back. It
13:13will go through the courts. It will be held up. And it'll be like, look, he tried to do a lot of
13:16this sort of stuff in his first term, building a wall, making Mexico pay for it. He tried to do
13:20these increased bans for Muslim-majority countries, and that all got tangled up in the court systems.
13:26You can go back and forth talking about whether or not those policies were correct or right,
13:29but the point is there is a way to protest these things and more or less stonewall them
13:34in this country. That's kind of a separate debate about whether or not that should be
13:38allowed to happen. But the idea of a mass—so my first point is I don't fault anyone for being
13:44nervous about it, especially if you are here as a legal immigrant or an illegal immigrant,
13:47because you don't know how serious this guy is being. But I think sort of just kind of maybe
13:53calm some fears. Realistically, from my understanding and from my experience,
13:58it's not going to happen, A, because logistically it would take—it'd be like the equivalent of
14:03mobilizing an entire military, except not even against a landmass or another opposing army. So
14:09I don't even know how that works. And the second thing is the court systems and the legal
14:13objections and challenges to it will essentially hold it up indefinitely.
14:18So I wouldn't be worried about—I guess I would say don't be worried about it. You have a reason
14:24to be worried about it, but don't be worried about it. That's the other thing, too. We saw
14:28this during his first term is he says a lot of these things, but he doesn't follow through on
14:32them. Either it gets held up or he doesn't even attempt to follow through on it. Building a wall,
14:37like he didn't really push for that. He says it because it's something that resonates well. I mean,
14:42there's a significant portion of his base support that hears mass deportations and they get
14:47excited and they want to, yeah, we need to clean it up. We need to X, Y, Z. But whether or not
14:53that can realistically happen, this is the thing. This is the sort of unexciting truth about Donald
15:00Trump. It's so unexciting it doesn't get book deals or booked on television. He is, I'm trying
15:07to think, yeah, he is a would-be autocrat in a country that is designed explicitly to check
15:13would-be autocrats. It is a country that has a maze and a network of checks and balances that
15:19you can say something like, I'm going to do mass deportations and you won't even get it off the
15:23ground because you will be checked and balanced either by the judiciary or by the legislative
15:27branch. That is the sort of, that is the thing where people talk about Donald Trump and fascism
15:32and dictatorships. It's not that easy in the United States. The people I do fear are the
15:37lawfare specialists, the people who know the law and know where all the corners and backroads and
15:42alleys are. Those are the people that I fear. Donald Trump is not one of those people. He is
15:46very much sort of banging his head against the door and see what happens. So that's kind of a
15:51winding answer to your question. Yeah. So now just talking about legal immigrants and, you know,
15:56a lot of these people come from India and, you know, and there has been a community, right,
16:02for over, you know, a couple of decades now. We've been majorly democratic leaning and democratic
16:09voters, but over some years, like we're seeing that Vikramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Bobby Jindal,
16:15all these, you know, Indian descent, Indian Americans are gaining a lot of, I would say,
16:22a popularity in terms of U.S. politics. So what do you think of this population? Do you think
16:28they've been, you know, coming out of that stereotype where they were just considered to
16:32be some nerd IT guys doing their own thing? And do you think this population holds any kind of,
16:40you know, relevance in terms of U.S. politics? Look, I mean, it's like any voting bloc or any
16:46specific group, if anyone wants to, you know, work hard and tell the truth, they will find
16:52a receptive audience. In my very sort of limited experience with desi communities, I've always been
16:57very sort of taken with how hardworking and sort of, not just even hardworking, but this sort of
17:03striving for excellence. Like we don't just get 100%, we get 110%, and we're going to learn five
17:08different instruments. I've always been very sort of like, wow, that's like very sort of impressive.
17:12And I've seen some of that in members of the community who have gone on to be in politics,
17:18very sort of dedicated and very inspired and very excited and enthusiastic about the job of good
17:27legislation and good governance. So regardless of whether, you know, members of the community
17:31go Democratic or go Republican, they will find a receptive audience. And it's kind of the beauty
17:35of America is that at some point, if you offer an exciting message and you offer something that's
17:42exciting, people really don't care where you come from. Some people may, but you know, you're going
17:47to find that anywhere you go. But you can, you can succeed so long as you have something to offer.
17:51It's a very, not to sound cynical about it, but it's very sort of transactional culture. You
17:56offer me something, I'll give you a vote. But yeah, to your point, it has been a much bigger
18:01representation in my lifetime. When I was a kid, I don't remember seeing many Indian Americans at
18:07all on the national stage. And to your point, we got Bobby Jindal, we got Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy,
18:12who's, I still trip up trying to pronounce his name. I will learn it. But yeah, no, is they,
18:19you know, I think anyone will find an acceptive, a receptive audience. And I do, I have seen an
18:25increase in participation from that community. So I welcome it. And I think based on the sort
18:31of reception that just those three I've named have found in recent years that it will continue to grow.
18:36Now, moving on to UK. So I read this article this morning that said that UK government is sending,
18:43I think over 100 of its labor representatives to some of the battleground states here in America
18:49to campaign for Kamala Harris. Do you think, do you think this is something that people call as
18:57election interference? And how do you think this is going to affect the US-UK relationship
19:03if Donald Trump comes to power? I'm trying to think of G-rated polite things I can say,
19:08because I find the story extremely annoying. There's one thing that Europeans are extremely
19:14good at, it's offering unsolicited opinions, which is funny too, when you hear Europeans
19:19talk about how arrogant and haughty they think Americans are, and then they will hold, you know,
19:25fake elections and send people over here to tell us how to do our elections. Not very polite for
19:32people who depend on us for their national security, but then again, parasites are rarely
19:36polite to their hosts. No, I don't, I think it will backfire horribly. I can't imagine that
19:42some labor member with a name like Archibald is going to have much sway over people in the
19:46Poconos or other swing areas, say, in North Carolina. People don't like being preached to
19:52or told how they should think, especially by people who have no skin in the game and who
19:57haven't been invited or asked. I don't think it will damage long-term UK-US relationship.
20:04That is the very sort of cliches, it's a special relationship, but it is though,
20:08the US government and UK government get along quite well. And, you know, the misguided arrogance
20:13of 100 labor members isn't going to damage that. Donald Trump may personally take it personally,
20:20and he may try to damage it, but the Senate, the House, Congress is not going to go to war
20:26with Parliament, nor will they fight on Trump's behalf, some grudge match or anything. And I mean,
20:32go to war figuratively, not literally. But I think it's a terrible idea that invites ridicule,
20:40not just for the labor members, but for the candidate the labor members are ostensibly
20:45trying to support. It makes them look out of touch. It makes them look like they don't know
20:50what they're doing. Like you're importing a bunch of labor members from Britain to tell me how to
20:54vote. And it's funny too, because I believe the term they're using is they're going to come over
20:59here to inform Americans on how to, quote, get their house in order. And it's like, get your
21:04house in order? Oh, thank you. I mean, the British still eat like there's a war going on, so maybe
21:09you can get your house in order first. I'm sorry, I find it very deeply annoying that anyone would
21:15come over here and tell me how to do my election, any more than I would come over there and tell
21:20them that, hey, maybe your king should have stayed with Diana instead of marrying his mistress. I
21:24mean, you do like that conversation? Oh my God. I mean, that would be rude, wouldn't it?
21:31Yeah, I think Britishers have this habit of, you know, poking nose, and that's how the colonies
21:35were, you know, developed. So they, I think. Yeah, no, they poked their nose over here a while ago.
21:40That didn't go so well. So we earned the right to tell them, no, thank you. And then we re-earned
21:45that right when we built them out of two world wars. So, you know, just thank you. We apparently
21:50we're doing better over here. Very irritating. I'm sorry. I love the British. I love the British,
21:55but I don't, I don't care for this. Yeah. Talking about Democrats and Kamala Harris,
22:00now this narrative came that, you know, US is not ready for a woman leader or somebody who's
22:06going to be at the top of the pyramid. Do you think, what do you think of this narrative?
22:10And do you think the situation, what, which Hillary was back when she was campaigning against
22:15Donald Trump is same as what Harris is right now? That's something we've been talking about since
22:192016, which is it's Clinton didn't lose because she ran a bad campaign. She lost it because
22:25Americans are sexist. I don't believe in that narrative. I don't buy that narrative. The fact
22:30that Clinton was the nominee of her party, granted there was a little bit of scale tipping that went
22:35on in the DNC. She got very close several times, by the way, that wasn't even the first time running
22:40for president. She was an unimpressive candidate with an unimpressive campaign. And the same,
22:47staying the same about Harris, I don't think Harris's chances of winning are very good.
22:50She does have a chance, but if she loses, I will not be surprised in the slightest. She
22:56is an unimpressive candidate running an unimpressive campaign. Generally speaking
23:00in developed countries or even undeveloped countries, the first female leader of that
23:05country is usually a force to be reckoned with, a very impressive, very powerful, very decisive,
23:13well-spoken woman. It's Margaret Thatcher or Golda Meir. Kamala Harris is no Margaret Thatcher
23:18and she's no Golda Meir. I'm sorry. It's pretty obvious just from watching or even listening to
23:23the woman speak. She doesn't have any sort of animating principle. If you tell me, if I were
23:29to ask you to explain to me, what is the Kamala doctrine? I guarantee you, you would not be able
23:34to tell me yet. I can tell you what Margaret Thatcher's doctrine was. I can tell you about
23:37Golda Meir's doctrine. There is nothing to Kamala Harris except for a person who wants to win an
23:43election. That's her main thing. Hillary, on the other hand, there was at least something there,
23:48but her message was so bad and so warped and so uninspiring, it is unsurprising that she lost.
23:54She was a very rare presidential candidate who, instead of saying, vote for me because this is
24:01what I can do for you, her message was, here's what you can do for me. For a while, her campaign
24:06slogan was, make her story, not history, her story, as in we owe it to her to vote for her
24:13because she wants to be the first woman president. That's not a message. What do I get out of it?
24:17I'm sorry. Again, it's transactional. Voters expect something. What are you going to do for
24:22me? What's in it for me? Hillary never said that. What did Trump say? He said he was going to make
24:26this country great again for you. That's a good message. Whether or not it's nonsense, whether or
24:30not he meant it, whether or not he followed through is one thing, but it's a good message.
24:34It's an easy message to remember, and it resounded with people. Make her story? Oh,
24:38yeah, please, may I serve you, Madam Vice President or Madam Secretary? You've been
24:44earning a paycheck off of my tax dollars for the better part of 30 years, and now you're asking for
24:48more from me. I'm sorry. That's not very inspiring. I don't think it's sexism. I think it's just not
24:53a very good candidate. I think America is ready to vote for a female president. America was ready
24:59to vote for a black president in 2008. I think they're ready for a female president when that
25:05competent and exciting candidate comes along. Right. That's all the questions I had. Thank
25:12you so much for doing this, and it's always so much fun to talk about politics with you.
25:16Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.