Why does Trump win in the polls if Biden has achieved full employment?
It's inflation.
Isn't the US economy in full euphoria and well managed?
Biden has achieved full employment and rising wages. But it is inflation, although it is already subsiding, that is punishing Biden, despite his brilliant management after the pandemic.
Do people blame you for the prices?
Republicans only talk about prices. And it works for them.
Doesn't the voter see that he or she lives better now than four years ago?
The average American voter judges their well-being by the price of gasoline, and it is cheaper today than the day Biden was sworn in.
So why isn't Biden coming back?
Because the voter's feeling, on the other hand, is that everything is very expensive and it is easy to blame Biden, even though he has achieved more jobs and better salaries than Trump. But above all there is fear...
Fear of what?
Trump is a master at generating fear in voters in decisive states, which are the ones that have been losing their industries.
How does it create fear?
He usually blurts out a “and now they will come for you” that distresses his entire audience.
Who will come?
Does not matter. That down-and-out white middle class is afraid of everything: the immigrant who will take their jobs, technology, feminism, the LGTBI movement, atheists...
But Trump was tried for harassment.
Everyone remembers that he was a stalker, but they don't care. They see him as the strong man who will defend them, because they are in danger.
What has changed since Clinton?
In the Clinton campaigns, the keys were taxes and subsidies; and, above all, education for all.
What are Trump and Biden discussing today?
The entire debate centers on the culture wars: the conservative fear of woke enemies of religion. And the economy has been reduced to “everything is expensive.” Foreign policy also harms Biden: Gaza penalizes him in votes that could be precious.
How do you know?
I have been very active – I am a businessman – in fundraising for the Biden campaign and I have heard that same analysis often.
What is Biden's problem?
The one you had, you will remember, was George Bush Sr., who was already very old compared to the young Clinton. Trump is an old man, but he conveys more firmness than Biden and the average American needs that feeling of strength...
Because?
Now think of America as a big queue of 300 million Americans...
Okay: I'm watching it.
...Everyone in it works to have a better life, themselves and their children, but if you are from the big Republican states: Texas, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi...
They have always pulled to the right.
He will think that someone is sneaking up on him...
Does being from Texas or Alabama give priority?
The supremacists see their supremacy threatened and that the woke, the feminism, the immigrants, the democrats, the colored ones are going to take away that priority: that they sneak in.
And that Trump will prevent it?
The rust belt states think the same: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin... The white working class is afraid that these upstarts will take their jobs and Trump repeats to them every day: “They're coming for me! And then they will come after you!”
Well, it is scary, yes; and he, more.
Trump's message thus reaches that white middle class that was once the privileged and today continues to believe that it should be.
How are the polls now?
I must also reassure you, because precisely my experience as a Democratic activist in ten campaigns is that nothing has been decided yet. Everything can change.
What was the best thing about those years as chief of staff in the White House?
I spent the first two years of the presidency with Clinton and it was exhausting. He was: he slept for four hours and never, ever, forgot a name or a face and always, always, he wanted to look good with everyone.
You haven't had a bad time in business.
The best thing then was to organize the president's jogging sessions with influential people or with just people.
I remember: was it your idea?
Yes and more fun than electing high positions. And then in Washington we did not suffer the aggressive polarization of these days.
What has changed?
Before – and I know this because he had his agenda – the president would have discreetly gone to dinner with Trump before Trump became what he is to save the system. These talks were common between rivals and made democracy work. Today I no longer know what can happen.
