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Hello, and welcome to How to Win 2024.

It's Thursday morning on August 29th. I'm Claire McCascoll. I'm here with my guest host today, former Republican congressman of Pennsylvania's 15th district, Charlie Dent. Hey, Charlie.

Hi, Claire. Great to be with you. Thanks for having me. And go, W eagles.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so on to the episode today. We're now less than 70 days out. It's hard to believe. This has been quite the whirlwind. I would call it a roller coaster. It has been quite a political summer for those of us who have a D behind our names. Vice President Harris and Governor Walsh are giving their first sit-down interview tonight on CNN. We'll talk about what message Harris and Walsh should deliver now that some of all of the good vibes from Chicago are beginning to dissipate somewhat. We'll also talk about my co-host, Home State of Pennsylvania, which is the epicenter of this campaign. If you're wondering where Trump or Vance or Harris or Walls is on any given day, if you guess Pennsylvania, you'll be right, because almost every day, one of them is in Pennsylvania. It is an incredibly important state in this election. We're going to talk to Charlie because he knows Pennsylvania like no one else knows Pennsylvania, except maybe my friend Bob Casey. We're also going to talk a little bit with Tramaine Lee, who is an MSNBC correspondent and host of our sister podcast, Into America, about new reporting coming out of the Democratic Convention on how Black male voters are feeling about this election and whether or not, Harris and Walls have something to worry about in that very important part of a Democratic coalition.

But first, Charlie, let's talk strategy. We've been in this podcast trying to have a little segment called If I Were in the Room, putting our election expertise on top of what's going on in these campaigns and giving our best advice over what it would take for them to do at this moment in order for them to win in 2024.

Well, at least in terms of Pennsylvania, I would have told them they need to run up to score in the Philadelphia media market. That's where probably 40% of all votes in Pennsylvania are. The city of Philadelphia, the four suburban collar counties. But I could take that even further to my old area, the Lehigh Valley, and in the Berkson Lancaster counties, which really represent the Philadelphia the media market. Again, probably over 40, somewhere around 40% of all votes. She will need to run the score up, not only in the city, but particularly those collar counties around Philadelphia. That would be my main advice. They would also need to spend a lot of time in the Lehigh Valley Particularly Northampton County, which is probably the ultimate Bellwether County, not only in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but in the country. That county went for Barack Obama in 2012, Donald Trump in 2016, Joe Biden in 2020, and it went very narrowly in each case. Whoever wins that county will in all likelihood win the Commonwealth and in all likelihood win the presidency.

Tell us about that county. Sure. Walk us down the streets of that county, and what is the makeup of that county? Is it suburban, ex-urban, a mix? What is it?

It's a mix. It includes the cities of Bethlehem and Easton. It's part of the Greater Lehigh Valley area, which is about 800,000 people. The county's population is probably around 350,000 people right now. It's an industrial area, but an interesting mix of urban, suburban, and rural communities. It's largely white, but a significant African-American population in the city of Easton, significant Hispanic population, city of Bethlehem, but a lot of ethnic white, old time, a lot of old Italian, Slovak. It's just a tremendous county to get a sense. It used to be a lot of working class Democrats there. Let's put it that way. Many legacy steel families in that area. But it also has a lot of interesting people coming in from New Jersey and New York. It's right on the state with New Jersey, and there are a lot of people now who commute into New Jersey every day or into New York City even. That's the county.

I wanted to ask you about Pennsylvania and voter fatigue. Because of the hyper concentration of resources in Pennsylvania, because of its importance. I know how tired people must be already of all of the advertising being bombarded on every screen they look at, whether it's their phone, whether it's their laptop, whether it's a TV. They are really getting hit. How do you factor that into what these campaigns should be doing? How would you advise them on their messaging in a county like Northampton for the last, especially last 30 days of the campaign?

Well, let me just say they are getting just bombarded with ads. I'm sitting down here at the Jersey Shore. It's part of the Philadelphia media market. Constantly, if you turn on the US Open or any cable network, all you see are political commercials for the presidential race or for the Senate race in Pennsylvania. That's it. That's pretty much all the advertising. If I were advising Harris, I would tell her and Walls, Keep pounding away on the issues of freedom, particularly women's reproductive rights. I think it's a very strong issue in that Philadelphia media market. They can't hit that issue enough. Probably, I would tell her to keep hitting Trump on his erratic behavior, not just January sixth, but just his erratic nature in general. If you're Trump, I would advise them, you keep pounding Harris on on inflation, which they're doing, inflation, the economy. They're running ads right now just pounding her on her support of Bidenomics. I would also hit her on the border, although Harris is able to counterpunch because of Trump's role in taking down the bipartisan border bill, which is a good piece of legislation, but Trump still has some advantages on the border and the economy.

That's how they're playing this game right now. It's really a matter of what voters care more about going into this election in the final 70 days or so.

The way Pennsylvania is being bombarded. I have a really vivid memory of Susan Collins's Senate race when all kinds of people came up to Maine from New York to knock on doors for her Democratic opponent. In Maine, they figured out that all these license plates were from New York, maybe even from Pennsylvania, not from Maine. It actually hurt the Democratic candidate that so many volunteers were showing up that weren't Mainers. Do you see that happening in Pennsylvania? Has that happened before? Should we do a cautionary note to everyone? I have a stepdaughter that lives in Portland, Oregon, and she texted me the other day, I'm going to Pennsylvania to volunteer, and I'm going, wait a minute. Not sure that that necessarily is the best idea. What's your take on that?

Well, look, Maine is a slightly different animal than Pennsylvania. It's a smaller rural state. Out-of-towners are going to be more easily noticed than maybe in Philadelphia, in the collar counties of Philly, where it's very heavily populated, densely populated. Again, depending where you're walking, it's never good to advertise that you're a volunteer from out of state. Don't do it. I would say if you're going to go and work on a campaign, sure, come on in, work. They'll put you to work, but Try to at least pretend that you're from the area.

She's my family. Maybe I should advise her, even though it will pain me to put on an Eagle shirt when she's going door to door. That would be very difficult for this Chief's fan to give that advice, but maybe that's the best advice to give to get some local- You guys won the Super Bowl.

What are you complaining about? I mean, you guys won. We lost, okay?

I know, but we're obnoxious winners.

Well, we're bad winners, too, by the way, in Philadelphia.

Listen, I was at the Super Bowl with you guys out in Arizona, and your fans were freaking obnoxious, Charlie did.

And they're quite proud of it, too. Oh, my goodness.

If I heard that song one more time, I think I was going to puke.

Fly, eagles, fly.

No, Fly, eagles, All right, so we're going to take a short break here, and we will be back, and we're going to check in with MSNBC correspondent host of Into America, Tramaine Lee, to get a sense of how Black male voters are fean about their options this fall. We were supposed to talk about RFK, but I've just taken a sworn oath to never talk about him again. Just go away and leave us alone. We'll be back in just a minute. Sunday, September 29th on MSNBC. Simone Sanders Townsend and Melissa Murray explore the power Black women hold in this year's election. Black Women in America, Sunday, September 29th at 09:00 PM Eastern on MSNBC and streaming on Peacock. Welcome back. My co-host, former Republican congressman Charlie Dent, is still with me. Charlie, now that the excitement of the convention is firmly in the rear view mirror, we want to start looking at how different voting coalitions are feeling as we head into the final months of the campaign. In the Democratic Party, if the coalitions are not happy, we don't win. It's just that simple. This week, we asked Tramaine Lee to join us to get his perspective on how Black men are feeling, what their concerns are, and whether Harris or Trump are gaining ground, and whether or not they are messaging in a way that is resonating with Black men.

He is a Pulitzer Prize and Emmy Award winner, a correspondent for MSNBC, and hosts our sister podcast, Into America. Tramaine Lee, welcome. We're really honored that you joined us today.

Oh, thank you so much for having me. The pleasure is absolutely mine. So thank you for having me.

So you joined Atlanta-based Black Men Lab in Chicago last week during the convention. Why don't you download what you learned from that? We always do a segment in this podcast if we were in the room. I want you to be in the room with the Harris Walls campaign and tell them what they need to hear, not what they want to hear, but what they need to hear.

Well, first of all, big shout to the Black Man Lab. It's an amazing organization because what they've managed to do is gather a cross-section of Black men that you rarely would have the opportunity to gather in one room, cross-generational. So you had young guys and older guys and guys in between, cross-class. You had guys who are working class and lawyers and activists all in one room together. The energy already is something unique to see this brotherhood and fellowship and real community. But What you heard in the room was certainly some excitement around VP Kamala Harris assuming the top of the ticket. But when you're in these spaces and having the conversations where it is a safe space and Black men are speaking to each other in a way that we don't often do in the open, it's family business. There's not just really concern around Kamala Harris, it's the politics more broadly. This idea that even the Democratic Party, you might see politicians when it's time to get their votes, and you might see them in church, and they're souls to the polls. There's all these other mechanisms that only come around periodically. But a sense that the politics of America are disconnected at best, and at worst, violent or hostile towards Black men in particular.

There's this feeling of certainly a number of the men were relieved that Joe Biden was no longer at the top of the ticket. They just couldn't connect to him or Donald Trump. So there is, again, seeing Kamala Harris, a Black woman, rising to the top of the ticket is one thing. But then beyond that, they were torn because they feel that They're forced in this two-party situation and not truly feeling like either party really either represents them or actually care about them. So there was a lot of that nuance that I think you have to be in the room to experience. You have to go and have those conversations and still the feeling that far too few politicians are actually going to these communities and have these conversations.

Might I just throw something out here? I'm trying to understand what is motivating a lot of Black men, particularly younger Black men, in terms of how they vote. One We have obviously racial divides in the country, but it seems to me much of the divides in the country right now are based on educational tame levels, those with college degrees and those without. It's very stark. Now, Democrats are dominating among those with college degrees and Republicans with those without a degree. That's changed in my lifetime, by the way. When I was a younger man, Republicans tend to do better among college-educated voters and Democrats among non- College-educated voters. You hear that Trump is maybe doing a little bit better among African-American males, younger males. Why is that? Is it because they maybe identify as more anti-elite, maybe many without a college degree, and they're behaving just like other voters without a college degree, white voters without a college degree, and maybe gravitating towards Trump? Do you see that as an issue?

Well, I think to the first part of your question, there are these deep opportunity gaps and gaps of access to education. When you look at the, say, college landscape now, filled with Black women, right? But Black men, we lose Black men through the pipelines very early. If you don't have a Black boy reading on level by the time you're in third and fourth grade, the likelihood that they'll be siphoned off into the criminal justice system, or what we call the missing, the millions of Black men who have dropped out of society, who don't have a job and don't have education, and they're all of the stress and tension foments, and then we see it unfurling in different ways. I think younger Black men, there's a stream of Black men who there's this appeal to the, and pardon my language, the big FU that Donald Trump gives to the establishment or appears to give the establishment, who guys who feel that there are all these burdens placed on their shoulders anyway, and no one truly cares. At every turn, there seem to be some evidence of that. Whether you're a Democrat or Republican, a lot of Black men know that if they're walking down the street in a hoodie, the nice white liberal lady is also scared, and also going to call the cops on the neighbor.

Also, you might have that Black Lives Matter sign on your window or front porch, but you're not moving next door to Black folks. You're not sending your kids to schools where there's a sizable portion of Black students. I think for a younger generation who don't feel bound to make the better of the worst decisions. For a number of generations, Black folks say, Listen, this isn't ideal, but we have to survive another day. Who is best positioned? For a very long time, there's been one party that has clearly operated more in the interest of Black folks, writ large, whether it's from the state hiring Black folks. Remember the state hired 25% of Black folks with jobs. It was from the state. They understand when the other party is talking about small government, they're talking about that. They're talking about the Department of Justice. They're talking about all the things that have helped benefit Black folks. But a new generation says, I have to vote Democrat just because my father did and my mother did and my grandfather did without any questioning, without any critique, without any real engagement, without seeing them, without knowing for a fact that the Democratic Party sees me beyond just souls to the polls and just this fringe, marginalized maybe vote, but they're not actually working for it.

I think there's a lot of that happening.

I'm curious, Tramaine. I see Trump's racist behavior so clearly, but it's not directed against me. I see whether it's Black jobs, whether him saying that they've got to reinstate, stop and frisk, whether it's him saying that Black men can relate to him because of his mugshot, all of that stuff really lands with me. I'm curious, is it landing with Black men, particularly young Black men? Are they seeing how racist he is, or is his ability to give the finger to the system, is that giving him a free pass with these voters?

I think that's a nuanced answer, because when you're having real conversations with Black men, we realize that, again, that there are White Democrats who are also racist. You deal with White racist all the time. Your manager might be a racist. He might just talk nice and might not just call you the N-word and might treat you just fine. So it's like, we know that White people. White people can be racist. Not all White people, but White people can be racist. But I think it's important for us also to level set here. Before Barack Obama, 12 to 13%, 14% of Black men voted for the Republican. They always got a certain percentage of the Black male vote. A lot of Black Republicans voted for Barack Obama because he was the first Black President. So now we're returning. And even at best, you're still going to get 80%, the Democratic Party is still going to get 80 plus % of Black men. And so part of this conversation I've been having, it's almost like in basketball, if you lose from a last second shot, you lost the game a long time ago. And so if it requires more than 80 plus % of any one voting block to vote a certain way, if it depends on that, you might be in trouble.

And so going back to that idea of these young Black folks who recognize this racism or not, again, it's not the most offensive thing that Black men and young Black folks have to deal with. You in your hood, you in your bop, you your music. It's all offensive to a lot of White folks. But I think what we're seeing here is a combination, and there are generational factors here at play. I think there's still a segment of Black voters who are going to do the practical, pragmatic thing for not just Black Americans, but America. So they're voting in a certain interest. It's not unlike other institutions who haven't found inroads into younger people and younger Black people in particular. I think the Democratic Party, and again, that's the one thing when I've been doing these reports across the country, and Even among rooms full of Black folks, young and old, who say, Listen, I'm going to vote for the Democrat no matter what, but here's the conversation. As soon as I put these videos out in social media, there's these hardcore partisans, Black and White, who are, These men are ignorant. Don't they understand the thread?

And the name calling doesn't work. It forces people further in the corner, but we can't even have a conversation. You have this feeling of beating Black men back into place if you have an idea. The idea of equality is maybe folks should be able to have bad ideas. In America, we understand the stakes are too high. Sometimes they have bad ideas, but the equality of sometimes we have bad ideas. Are we questioning white men the same way? Are we questioning white women the same way? It's just been a very interesting paradigm. But when you talk to these guys, I'm just shocked that the machine isn't saying, wait a second here. First of all, let's change their minds. Let's go there. I did a report on the east side of Detroit, one of the toughest neighborhoods. With organizations that are on the ground every single day, they are civically engaged. They're saying that we're so disconnected from the system. It really doesn't matter to us. We need to feed the people. We need to address some of their needs. The folks who are falling through the cracks, who feel the violence of the weight of all the systems, the carceral system and lack of access to food and try to take care of their families and their kids the same way anyone else.

But No part of the system is really engaging them besides the actual cogs of the machine.

What issue? I look at Trump wanting to do away the Department of Education, and I look that as we see the decline of public education, Many of the problems of public education have been centered in urban areas, and clearly, we have not done something right in urban areas. When we have young Black boys reading two or three grades off-level across the board in most urban communities, we have failed. Is that an issue? If you had to advise them, I know the student loan thing helps, at least in conversations with young Black voters. A lot of them have been saddled with just untenable student loans, many of which they got and didn't get much for it, candidly. What would be the issue if Kamala was sitting across the table from you right now? What would be the one or two issues you would say, you've got to really drive this home in your digital ads that are reaching young Black voters?

That's complicated, and I don't want to wait too far into the order of advisor as a journalist, but I would say a couple of One, when it comes to the education piece, I think that is a very important issue. By the time you get to college, that's a class thing. Most Black people aren't graduating with four-year degrees. That's already, and nothing wrong with those of us who have graduated, but it's a different ball game. When you're talking about early education and how are we losing young people, young boys in particular, who aren't arriving ready to learn necessarily. But by the time you get to education, you're already a few steps behind. One of the biggest issues, and this doesn't always come up specifically, but it's part of the broader umbrella of issue that folks care about is how many young people are arriving at school hungry. Do you feel safe? The march from your house to the school. Are you faced by danger of police, danger of criminals, danger of stray bullets? So it's never hearing necessarily that the number one issue is early education, but it's like, are we arriving in a space that kids are prepared and healthy enough to learn?

And so I think that's a big issue. But the one issue that came up-time and time again, I think this is where there is some overlap with some of the appeals from Donald Trump. It's the opportunity the opportunities to build businesses, the opportunity to create wealth. There's this idea that's been churning in our community for a very long time of creating generational wealth. You'll hear it time and time again because that was denied us for so long. From the very beginning, we're still trying to untether ourselves from all of the strictures that this society has placed around us, not being able to own homes, the big red lines drawn around them, all the segregation, all the things that depleted wealth, even though Black people helped fuel the growth in this country as It's the opportunity gaps. When you talk to young people, they're aspiring to open their own businesses, aspiring to be able to provide for their families and the generation that comes after. That's part of the thing. Even when we know the funny business that Donald Trump engaged in, put his name on the stimulus checks. It was held up because he had to get his name on that.

This idea that he is this successful businessman, and he might be crass, but he's successful in business, we know that not to be true. We know this man failed at every step. But the branding, and a lot of us grew up hearing Donald Trump synonymous with this overconsumption of materialism and all the things that Americans aspire to. That's the piece there. Black men want to be able to take care of their families. That's the one thing that, again, all of these other forces collude against us in doing. Have you been removed from your family because now you're incarcerated, because you're trying to get some money because you didn't have the education, so now you're hustling? As they say, the streets are always hiring. Have you been sidelined from injury from police violence or community violence? And so the stress that Black men feel, because as we know, we are in this of gendered society. And as a man, you want to know for a fact that I can protect my family and I can provide for my family. Obviously, our gender roles have evolved and become a little more sophisticated and more equal, but still at its heart, men want to feel like you can do that.

And this country hasn't really ever supported us in doing so. I think that's undergirding a lot of the politics. When you say a Democrat might be better off, well, show me how. Because whether it's a Barack Obama or Donald Trump, it's hard for some people to measure how much better or worse their life because it seems pretty much the same.

Can I just say one thing, too? In 2020, after George Floyd was killed, crime in Philadelphia really spiked, not just in the downtown business area, but in many areas that are predominantly Black. Donald Trump did worse in every county in Pennsylvania, 66 out of 67, compared to 2016. Except there was one county he did marginally better in, even though he got crushed there, Philadelphia. I assumed that a lot of it was driven by the crime issue and that there were many people, I mean, enough people, African-Americans still went for Biden overwhelmingly, but enough of African-American males and Hispanic males. People were just angry about the crime. I thought that's the only reason why Trump did a little better in Philadelphia, unlike every other county where he did a little bit worse. Does that make any sense to you, Tramaine?

It does make some sense. I'm intimately familiar with Philadelphia. I grew up in South Jersey, right across the bridge. My first job was in the Black Press, the Philadelphia Tribune. Oh, boy. First internship to Philadelphia Daily News. I'm an Eagles fan, so go birds. Oh, no, Lord.

I'm out of numbers.

You're a great American.

Oh, my God. At least we won.

Listen, we have to figure something out. Last year was an embarrassment. Yeah, I know. But Philadelphia, the poorest big city in the country, but also has a specific diversity that you don't find many places. So growing up, ethnic white folks who are still in the city, working class white folks next to Black folks, Italians, Irish, Polish, next to African Americans, a heavy Black Muslim population. It's the only city in the country with a majority Black Muslim population. But it's also, again, because of everything that comes along, everything is adjacent with poverty, the violence and crime. There is something to this idea, I believe, when there is a sense of general lawlessness this, a sense that it just feeds on itself. The police respond a certain way, criminals respond a certain way. I think part of that, Donald Trump get out there and is aggressive and it was overwrought. And we know the pain that that rhetoric, how it actually manifestsates in communities who already suffer it during the best of times. I think that message can work because people do feel it. But in certain communities, they've always felt it. But I think Philadelphia has a certain mix of working class, ethnic Whites, and Black folks that I think there is some appeal with that.

Well, I will tell you that in my experience, and I have a lot of it, I'm somebody who couldn't have ever won statewide if I hadn't gotten over 90% of the Black vote in Missouri. I prided myself in not just showing up every six years. I will tell you that in my experience, the biggest mistake Republicans make when they come to looking at the Black vote is they somehow characterize it as one-dimensional or two-dimensional, instead as complicated as it is. They underestimate how knowledgeable the Black community is about who represents them, about what is going on. To this day, if I walked into a grocery store and half the people there in Columbia, Missouri were Black and half were White, the Black people would be more knowledgeable about the issues. They would certainly feel free to come up and talk to me about the issues. They would immediately know who I was. When I saw that Trump was going to do a campaign on menthol cigarettes, I thought, really, this guy is so underestimating Black men and thoughtful, and as you have said over and over again, how nuanced this really complicated world is right now when it comes to trying to reconnect with people who have found the door shut just about every corner they came around.

I've always said this, that if not for the racism inherent, again, in American politics, but on one side in particular, if you remove the racism, there are a lot of conservative thinking Black people. But one party has been so bound for so long, not that everyone in the party is a racist, but if you're You're an avowed racist, you know what side you're going to be on. If you were able to remove that, even issues around the border. I've been in New Mexico and Arizona. We can't get to the conversation about any drain or not on the system because of all the racism in the conversation. You can't engage with industry issues because we can't have an honest, thoughtful conversation about the realities because we know it's fueled by racism. Anyway, men thought cigarettes and your mug shot. That's not going to do it for Black men.

That's not going to do it for Black men. But Listen, Tremaine, it has been really great to have you today. I am grateful. I think these conversations are incredibly important. I know you're a journalist, so you can't be in the room, but they'd be lucky to have you in the room. So thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Tramaine, Elaine Lee is a Pulitzer Prize, an Emmy Award winner, and a correspondent for MSNBC News, and hosts our sister podcast, Into America. Next up, how Kamala Harris can bring in more conservatives like Charlie Dent. Back in a moment.

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Welcome back. Charlie, I want to spend a little bit of time in this last spotlight segment on the Republican Party and Effect of Republicans. But before we get to that, I wanted to briefly hit on the fact that tonight Kamala Harris is doing what they've been yelling at her to do, sitting down for an interview on CNN. She and the vice presidential nominee, Tim Walls, are going to sit down. Give me your two as to what they should be stressing in the interview tonight, whether you think this is as big a deal as the Republicans have made it.

Well, I think Kamala Harris just simply has to come off as being authentic, not make any mistakes, just answer questions, just demonstrate a broad and deep knowledge of the issues that are presented. I think that's what she needs to do, that she can handle things in an unscripted way. That's all this is really about. And again, not make any mistakes. I'd probably advise her to try to keep tacking to the center and not get too specific on policy. I think she's going to have to try explain why she has changed positions on some issues, Medicare for all, fracking, whatever other issues. She's going to have to give an explanation other than she just changed for political reasons. She's going to have to explain that a little bit. But as long as she doesn't make any mistakes, as long as she seems authentic and no errors, I think that's a win for her.

I predict she'll do fine. I'm biased on this. I believe if you've been a courtroom prosecutor, you are in the ultimate training ground to thinking on your feet and operating without a script. She did that for many years. You just can't have a script when you're in the courtroom in the middle of a criminal trial. I think she'll do fine. I'm looking forward to watching tonight.

There's one other thing she has to watch how for, too, that she's probably going to have to show that on the one hand, she's loyal to Joe Biden and supports him and his agenda, but also distinguish where there are differences, maybe. That's a fine line to walk. It's a tricky thing to do. I'm sure she can handle herself unscripted. I'm not worried about that. But drawing out where she's different from Biden is going to be a delicate matter for her.

That's hard. Yeah. That's hard stuff because you don't want to alienate the loyal Biden folks, and we have legions of them in our party for all the right reasons. But you also have to tack to the middle and get those independent voters in those important places like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Let's talk about the Republican Party. We had 200 Republican leaders sign a letter. We've had many people that served in his administration refuse to endorse him. What do you think about disaffected Republicans that are rejecting Donald Trump? And what is it? Why isn't When Cheney endorsing Harris, and why aren't Kelly and Mattis and some of those folks and Romney, why aren't they actually speaking to the specifics of this election, in your opinion?

Well, for a variety of reasons. By the way, let me say straight up. In 2016, I was in Congress. I did not support Donald Trump. I said it publicly at the time. I didn't vote for him. I wrote in somebody. In 2020, I was out of Congress, and I publicly endorsed Joe Biden simply because I wanted to get rid of Donald Trump, well, acknowledging that there were differences of opinion. This election, I'm I'm not voting for Donald Trump, but I haven't endorsed Kamala Harris either. But I think there are a lot of Republicans right now who are very disaffected and disperited. They're unhappy with the direction of the party. The Republican Party is clearly divided. It is not evenly divided, but it is clearly Biden. You might say, Well, let's look at that Nikki Haley voter, for example, person like them who tend to be a bit more moderate. They might be college-educated. They simply just do not like Trump the way he carries on, even if they might agree with some of his policies, but they have differences of opinion with him and his style. I think many Republicans right now who supported Joe Biden, I've talked to many, just felt like I didn't want anything.

When I endorsed Joe Biden, I didn't want anything. I wasn't looking for anything. But I just never got the sense that they were fully appreciated. I think the Harris campaign is trying harder to reach out to Republicans in a more meaningful way than maybe the Biden campaign did back then. There were a lot of Republicans who just felt like, well, Biden tack left. He said he was going to be a governor from the center. He went for the center of the Democratic Party. They weren't happy with the rescue plan. They thought it was overspending by hundreds of billions at that time. They were maybe unhappy about the student debt forgiveness and certainly the Afghanistan withdrawal. But it's hard for many people in the Republican Party still are thinking about policy. I mean, I get it. In 2020, I said it wasn't about right or left. It was about right or wrong, that Trump was just wrong in so many ways. But I think we've moved a little bit beyond that debate, that some of these Republicans are still thinking about policy. While they can't stand Trump, do They really want to go entirely with the Democrats who might pull the country in a direction they don't like.

It's a tough thing for many of them right now. I mean, maybe for the Democrats, they win if these Republicans just sit it out. They'd rather have them vote for Harris as opposed to Trump. But if they just don't vote at all, I guess that probably helps the Democratic candidate a little bit.

Talk a little bit about our Republican legacy. I know that my friend Jack Danforth is involved. What is our Republican legacy and what do you hope to accomplish? Do you feel that if Trump is defeated in November, there's a chance for the policy part of the Republican Party to take hold again, as opposed to the personality part?

Yeah, but the whole purpose of our Republican legacy, established by your former Missourian Jack Danforth, he and Alan Simpson and Bill Cohen, who are the three ring leaders, and we have many other people who have signed up as well. But our objective is to try to get the Republican Party focused on five core principles. We're also trying to establish an alternative narrative to MAGA. For too often, those people who have not been happy with Trump and the Republican Party have chosen silence. I've always said, Well, silence is not an alternative. Silence is silence. That just simply allows Donald Trump and the MAGA argument to predominate. There's been no pushback. We're trying to create that pushback by talking about five core principles. The Constitution, we believe in the rule of law, we believe in the peaceful transfer of power, we're for orderly transitions. We found January sixth reprehensible. We're for unity. We think this country is big It's diverse, and we need to bring people together and not break it apart. We believe in free markets. Now, we're not bloodites. We're not talking about 1850 or 1920s. We're talking about modern reasonable regulation, but we believe in free markets.

We find these tariffs that Trump is talking about as an abominable nation. We also think we have to start, again, talking about some type of fiscal responsibility. Our final principle, I would say, is we want to talk about constructive international engagement, call it peace through strength, but embracing allies, pushing back against ruthless autocrats like Vladimir Putin, and it being more traditional in that sense, maybe in the Dwight Eisenhower sense of what the Republican Party became. From Dwight Eisenhower through Nixon, Reagan, Ford, the Bush, et cetera, that's where we were. Now we've got this isolationist, protectionist, nativist and at times nihilistic mentality that's dominating. We're trying to create this alternative. We're looking beyond 2024. One thing I like to always point out that we're not telling people how to vote. We're not telling them what to do. But I can tell you that virtually everybody in our group is disparited or disillusioned with the current direction of the party.

I'm curious as I look at the organizations that I saw as foundational to the Republican Party when I was in Washington, folks like The Heritage and Cato to some extent. But I look at all those organizations conversations, and they've either been sidelined or they've been totally taken over by MAGA. What I want to hear you talk about is with JD Vance as the VP nominee, let's just assume for a moment that Trump loses. You've got people like JD Vance and you've got people like Josh Hawley who make grand Paul look like a want to be in terms of their view on some of the policies. I mean, I'm not sure Josh Hawley believes any of it. I don't know about JD Vance. It doesn't feel like to me he believes a lot of it. But are there going to be enough people that are so politically ambitious that they try to keep the MAGA majority and the Republican Party superior to the folks you're talking about who believe in free markets and free trade and fiscal responsibility smaller government and all the things that traditionally I think of as the Reagan Republican Party?

Yeah. I also like to throw in the term social tolerance. We should be more tolerant socially. Look, I was really disturbed by the Vance pick. I thought, why would he select the chairman of the Ukraine Surrender Caucus, Russia Appearment Caucus, to be the vice presidential running mate? I just thought that was really stunning for me. I'm not sure that a lot of these folks believe what they're selling. I mean, these are people who are highly educated, many ivyly educated, and they're talking what I'd consider to be populist nonsense. That is a dead end. I think over time, they're going to figure that out. There's no future in this because what they're trying to do is shrink the party. They're not trying to reach out to people who are a little bit different than they are. They just want to double down on the people that they think Trump has. And look, Trump is the leader of a movement. A lot of people support Trump because they like Trump. We can argue about whether it's charisma, but he has an appeal to people. And this charisma he has is not necessarily transferable, say, to DeSantis or to, pick your favorite MAGA Wanabe.

I don't think it's transferable. So once Trump is off the stage, if that ever happens, I think that we're going to have a real fight within this party about what the direction should look like, because I can make a very strong case That the party has seen nothing but defeat since 2016, since Trump took over. Look what happened in 2018. House goes away. The 2020, you lose the presidency and you lose the Senate. 2022, Republicans significantly underperform. And we've seen nothing but defeat and a shrieking of the no appeal to more moderate voters. Ironically, the one thing that... I was the last pro-choice Republican in the House of Representatives. I got to tell you, I'm stagger that Trump is now trying to moderate on the abortion issue. I think it's the right thing to do, but he's obviously not the right messenger given how transactional- What he did. What is even more funny about the whole thing is I was just reading the other day that some evangelicals are really upset that Trump is so unprincipled on abortion. I said, Well, yeah, he's the most transactional guy in the planet, and you deal with them.

You deal with them. Now you're shocked that he's betraying you on this issue. But the point is, Trump did everything he could to overturn Roe v Wade. Now he's trying to moderate. I think the party does need to moderate on the issue, but again, the wrong messenger. The party is in a funky place on a number of issues, whether it's on spending or even on abortion. Then you have these guys. Look at what these state guys are doing on IVF and on the abortion question, even though I think most Republicans in Washington realize these are just losing issues for the party.

Yeah, and it is really fascinating to me because as somebody who's been steeped in Missouri politics as long as I have. I mean, the Republican primary ads. We had lots of primaries in Missouri for governor, for all the statewide races. I mean, these primary ads, Charlie, you would not have believed how crazy they were. I mean, nutty. Yeah, I would. They are going so far into the darkness in terms of where they are. Of course, our state, the government tells a rape victim, she has to give birth to a rapist child, and They were not willing to even change that in the last session after Roe v Wade was overturned. It's very, very extreme. It'll be fascinating to see how this works going forward. It has been great having you today. I admire you for a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons is that you maintain some moderation on issues that was very difficult for you to do in your party. I have walked down that path before, and sometimes there are a lot of landmines, and you survived all those landmines and lived to tell about it, so good on you.

Well, look, I went through 13 elections in my life, seven for Congress. I have to say I'm 13 and 0, undefeated and unindicted.

Listen, it's been great to have you here today. Thank you so much, and we appreciate you taking the time to visit with us today. We'll circle back again, I hope, before the election or maybe after.

Very good. Thank you, Claire.

Thanks for joining us for today's installment of How to Win 2024. A big thanks to my co-host today, former Republican congressman of Pennsylvania's 15th Charlie Dent. Before we head out, I want to remind you about MSNBC Premium. It's a special subscription offering on Apple Podcasts. When you subscribe, you'll get new episodes of How to Win 2024 and all of MSNBC's original podcast, ad-free, plus exclusive bonus content every month. Subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts right from your phone or whatever device you're listening on right now so you don't miss a beat. This episode was produced by Max Jacobs and Vicky Virgolina. Jamaris Perez is our Associate Producer. Katherine Anderson is our audio engineer. Our head of audio production is Bryson Barnes. Ayesha Turner is the executive producer for MSNBC Audio, and Rebecca Cutler is the Senior Vice President for Content Strategy at MSNBC. Search for How to Win 2024 wherever you get your podcast and follow the series.

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