Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Debatable Discussions podcast.
Speaker: Today, me and John will be talking about the US election and we'll give our thoughts, opinions, and as well a bit of information on what has happened and what will happen in our opinion.
Speaker: So, yes, the US election is fast approaching and we are seeing this battle between Trump and Harris really heating up.
Speaker: I mean, only yesterday, by the time this comes out, Trump would have been in Butler, Pennsylvania, at the site of his assassination, giving another speech to a pretty quite large and proud crowd of MAGA supporters.
Speaker: However, what's really been on the news recently is the vice presidential debate and this was obviously between J.D.
Speaker: Vaart and Tim Woltz.
Speaker: So Diane, can you perhaps quickly give your perspective on this debate?
Speaker: Yeah, so I thought, I watched the debate, I thought JD was the clear winner of it.
Speaker: You could tell a big difference, I thought, in not only media training that JD has had a bit more than Tim Walz, but also a difference in characters.
Speaker: In my opinion, you could see JD Vance a bit more of an introverted intellectual.
Speaker: Tim Walz, on the other hand, he's a teacher.
Speaker: more sort of folksy, if I could say so.
Speaker: He's, you know, he's at the rallies, he's like, oh, with the crowd.
Speaker: But on a one-on-one topic, conversation on policy, he got completely outcast by J.D.
Speaker: Vance.
Speaker: Also, it's very important to note that JD was very different in the debate to how many people expect him to act.
Speaker: So he was very nice.
Speaker: I thought, first of all, I'd like to commend both for having an actual debate and not screaming at each other, you're the worst.
Speaker: I haven't seen anyone be worse at your job, you know, how hard.
Speaker: yeah, you're fired and all that stuff.
Speaker: They've had an actual debate on policy, which was respectful.
Speaker: And I thought JD clearly won.
Speaker: What do you think, John?
Speaker: Yeah, I agree with you.
Speaker: And with JD, before this debate, everyone's perspective of JD was as this rather slightly wild...
Speaker: you could almost say bizarre, lunatic American politician.
Speaker: I mean, it's best summarising how Tim Walz called him kind of weird because he was quite weird.
Speaker: However, in the debate, he was not like that at all.
Speaker: He came across as, I guess you could say, quite mild, not really at all like his past sort of activities which have been dug up.
Speaker: And he came across as a better candidate to Tim Walz.
Speaker: And another quite nice characteristic of this debate, as you mentioned, was these, and I think I saw it, and this is how you could best say it, the cordial clashes between them.
Speaker: With Harris versus Trump, they're fierce clashes.
Speaker: There's little respect.
Speaker: I think in this debate, I think there was an element more of respect.
Speaker: And yes, there's primarily an element of greater respect, but J.B.
Speaker: Vance did come across as the better candidate, which was to most people's surprise as well.
Speaker: I was expecting it, though.
Speaker: I'm going to have to be fully honest.
Speaker: I think JD today is probably the best debater in American politics.
Speaker: And to me, that isn't very surprising.
Speaker: If you look at his past achievements as being editor of the Law Editorial at Yale, he's obviously very bright.
Speaker: Again, I think he's one of the more socially awkward intellectuals that you find, but he's definitely a very bright guy.
Speaker: And I also thought, you know, talking about respect, they agreed with each other.
Speaker: They said, I agree with Senator Vance, or I think Tim has the right approach on this.
Speaker: I think he wants to solve the issue, but I don't think Kamala Harris does.
Speaker: Also, what I thought was quite interesting from J.D.
Speaker: Vance was when Tim Welts talked about his son witnessing a shooting.
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: I thought that was, I don't know, I'm going to be honest, I don't know if he actually feels sorry or if it's just his political instincts came out.
Speaker: But whichever one, brilliant move from a PR perspective, frankly.
Speaker: Yeah, and you just wouldn't see that with Trump versus Harris.
Speaker: There's so much hatred between them.
Speaker: And that element of respect came across quite nicely, as you said there.
Speaker: I think the other characteristic which really came across is just how, in many ways, they showed why the vice president debate really isn't that significant.
Speaker: And that is in how they were attacking each other's running mates, mainly.
Speaker: And that's because whilst the vice president, you know, it can affect the result of the election.
Speaker: At the end of the day, you're voting for a president.
Speaker: And with vice presidents, you either have the active type or you have the inactive type, but the American people don't really know.
Speaker: And in the past, I mean, if you think about it, Kamala's tried to be a bit more of an active vice president, but someone like Mike Pence,
Speaker: If you voted for Trump because you wanted to vote for Mike Pence, you'd been basically disappointed because you never heard from Mike Pence.
Speaker: So at the end of the day, whilst the debate has a bit of significance, the presidential debates are really the ones that matter.
Speaker: Yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker: And I think maybe here there was a bit of a...
Speaker: mistake on Kamala Harris's side on not picking Josh Shapiro.
Speaker: I thought he was the clear, clear pick for the VP role.
Speaker: I mean, governor of the biggest swing state in the US, very young, dynamic, vibrant, good match for JD Vance.
Speaker: No concerns about age or anything else, frankly.
Speaker: I think he would have been a very, very strong opponent in that debate.
Speaker: I thought here we could see that Tim Walsh's sort of lack of experience at this level of scrutiny kind of showed.
Speaker: He's very good at the rallies, again, very good with people.
Speaker: But when it comes to high levels of scrutiny on a one-on-one policy-based conversation, he got completely outclassed.
Speaker: Yes, Shapiro, as you said, he was the immediate front, like the front runner, basically to be Harris's vice president, because as you just said, then he's young firstly, but also he is most importantly, the governor of Pennsylvania, a huge swing state.
Speaker: And I mean, I've just looked at the results and well, the forecasting predictions and the Democrats are just slightly ahead in Pennsylvania.
Speaker: But that margin of victory or victory,
Speaker: of win would be so much larger had she had Shapiro's support so I think for him as well he will recognise when he sees Tim Walz's debate and he sees the results he will probably know that he could potentially have done a better job yeah I think definitely if let's say Trump does end up winning the election I think the 2028 election will likely be a match between J.D.
Speaker: Vance and
Speaker: Josh Shapiro, in my opinion.
Speaker: If Trump wins, they are the two likely candidates who will be carrying on the mantle, as they say.
Speaker: So moving on now to a bit of a more general outline.
Speaker: Could you tell us, John, a bit about the polls?
Speaker: What are the polls saying?
Speaker: Who's leading?
Speaker: And is anyone leading or is it too close to call?
Speaker: So, yes, the polls at the moment do have Harris narrowly leading over Trump.
Speaker: And it is actually quite interesting because basically since the assassination attempt on Trump, there was a short period, a short-ish period of which Trump was leading.
Speaker: And then since it's just been Harris's support has gradually increased,
Speaker: And now actually over the past few weeks or so, it's sort of plateaued in reality, the support for her.
Speaker: But she is about 3% higher than Trump, which she'll be happy about.
Speaker: But the margin for victory, well, the margin she has over Trump is so small that it makes this election sound predictable because it's only about 2-3%.
Speaker: So really anything can happen, the smallest error, and that could just be reversed completely.
Speaker: Trump could be leading.
Speaker: So, I mean, obviously one of the things we thought about is can we give a prediction?
Speaker: But it's so hard at this point.
Speaker: It's not really in the past where you've got a clear front runner.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, yeah.
Speaker: I agree with you completely.
Speaker: I think it's...
Speaker: I think we'd be doing more harm than good by giving a prediction, to be honest, because it is way too close to call.
Speaker: I don't think there's any election in the past in US history that's been this close, this close from the election.
Speaker: I mean, we're very, very close.
Speaker: We're approaching the last sort of 100 metres of the election, if you could say so.
Speaker: And a 2% difference in a poll-based system means nothing because, you know, polls...
Speaker: I don't know how the accuracy level of this one, but many polls do say they have a 5% sort of margin of error.
Speaker: And if this one follows that sort of margin of error, then it doesn't mean anything.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I mean, the only other election that I could really compare with how I think this one will sort of turn out is obviously the Al Gore in 2000.
Speaker: Al Gore Bush.
Speaker: I mean, he was so close.
Speaker: Really, really, he can almost feel it.
Speaker: I mean, he did win the popular vote, but it's not the electoral college.
Speaker: And so I can sort of see this election turning out like that.
Speaker: I think it will be close.
Speaker: However, that's from the perspective of this moment.
Speaker: We've got Trump, a very unpredictable person.
Speaker: And we've got Kamala, who's... Is her campaign that great?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: I mean, she talks the most about her weakest issue, foreign policy.
Speaker: And she talks the least about her best issue, which is abortion right now.
Speaker: So I think she really needs to change the direction.
Speaker: I think you can see as well that she is a bit experienced.
Speaker: She hasn't been through an open convention or even the primaries.
Speaker: So, I mean, she has been in the past with the primaries, but it's a bit different when you're actually winning the primaries because you get a bit of scrutiny from other candidates and you can work a bit on your positions.
Speaker: I also don't think that it's helping her because, frankly, the past five years of Biden,
Speaker: But four years of Biden haven't been fantastic.
Speaker: And she can't really say, well, you're happy with how it's been in the past because it's kind of her fault.
Speaker: So, yeah, I think her campaign probably isn't that great.
Speaker: I think she does need to focus more on her abortion policy.
Speaker: And I think, again, Trump is going to battle Pennsylvania.
Speaker: I, for one, think that is going to bring him a bit of support.
Speaker: It's going to revive a bit of the Trump cult.
Speaker: But again, it's very unpredictable.
Speaker: We frankly don't know anything about this election because it's one person who's inexperienced and then Trump who's, you know, Trump.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, as you said there, her track record as a vice president was just rather dismal.
Speaker: I mean, she failed on immigration.
Speaker: She couldn't really get much policies elsewhere.
Speaker: I mean, she tried hard, but she reached little success.
Speaker: The other thing, which is obviously a key factor and which we slightly earlier on slightly alluded to, is the swing states.
Speaker: So I thought I'd quickly go through how all the swing states are looking.
Speaker: So the largest swing state, as we mentioned, is Pennsylvania.
Speaker: So they've got 19 electoral college votes.
Speaker: So it's significant winning it.
Speaker: At the moment, it's the Democrats just slightly winning.
Speaker: However, with Pennsylvania and Trump, he's really focusing a lot of effort on a manpower on Pennsylvania.
Speaker: It really could go either way.
Speaker: I mean, it's hard to predict, but I do see it perhaps going slightly towards the Democrats.
Speaker: But the margin of victory overside would be so narrow.
Speaker: I wouldn't.
Speaker: Yeah, I wouldn't be so sure.
Speaker: I think I would actually, depending on the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, how that goes, I think that could change it completely because it's clearly going to bring...
Speaker: a big, big, big shift in the Republicans in Pennsylvania.
Speaker: He's going back to that place where he rose as this God-chosen leader, as he would like to claim it.
Speaker: And I, for one, would see the state going red.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, but by the time of recording this, the rally has happened.
Speaker: So the rally has happened, and the Democrats still are slightly winning after that rally.
Speaker: So that's why I'm more inclined to say them, but it is just such a toss-up, but no one knows really.
Speaker: Even after the rally, they do have that slight margin of victory, which is favouring them.
Speaker: North Carolina is the second biggest.
Speaker: They're drifting towards the Republicans a little bit more significantly as well.
Speaker: So that's a slight indication of how it will be, but still, the margins of victory are so small.
Speaker: Yeah, and similar sorts of thing with Nevada, very small margin of victory.
Speaker: The only swing states where we see perhaps a slightly more dominant performance from either party are in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Speaker: So the Democrats in both of those places are winning by 1.6 points.
Speaker: However, that would just be a direct result of Tim Walts, who is from that Rust Belt area of America.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I definitely agree with the polls on those two.
Speaker: But again, Pennsylvania and North Carolina are simply too close to court, I think.
Speaker: I would see Pennsylvania going red and the other one going blue.
Speaker: The polls take a complete different.
Speaker: So I think we'll have to see.
Speaker: But it's definitely been a very, very interesting couple of weeks in the election run-up.
Speaker: So I think now for some closing sort of predictions.
Speaker: I think that Pennsylvania would be going to the Republicans, North Carolina to Democrats.
Speaker: And I'm not very sure who's going to win.
Speaker: John?
Speaker: I would say...
Speaker: Personally, I'd say North Carolina goes Republican.
Speaker: Also from that, even though it's a swing state, so it could go either way, just from the last election as well, how it is Republican at the moment.
Speaker: Biden won at the last, I mean, Trump won at the last election for the Republican.
Speaker: So I think, I see North Carolina personally going Republican.
Speaker: Pennsylvania is a lot harder to call because the margin is...
Speaker: significantly smaller than in North Carolina, which is already a very small margin of victory.
Speaker: At the moment, I would say it goes Democrat, even despite not having Josh Shapiro support.
Speaker: But Trump is really focusing on it because of the amount of electoral college votes, which he can gain from there.
Speaker: So I really do think it could go either way.
Speaker: I'd guess a very narrow victory to the Democrats.
Speaker: I think, yeah, I don't think it's possible to know for sure at this point, but I'm going to, just for the sake of having a bit of a right, I'm going to say it's going to be a very narrow victory to the Republicans.
Speaker: And then
Speaker: In 2028, I think we'll have a J.D.
Speaker: Vance, Josh Shapiro showdown.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, for 2028, it's quite early to cool.
Speaker: But, I mean, the thing about them is that they're both young people.
Speaker: So they're both definitely viable candidates for the time.
Speaker: And obviously, from our perspective now, this seems the most...
Speaker: obvious choices so I think yes I think definitely from our perspectives right now for 2028 they're definitely the most obvious ones however we've got four years until then so I think yeah if there could be an emerging person who we just don't know but yeah
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