Biden-Trump Rematch?

Ruminating with Chris Matthews

Chris Matthews

I first met Chris Matthews in the summer of 1978 when I was a college intern in Jimmy Carter’s White House speechwriting office and he — a veteran of the Peace Corps in Africa and an unsuccessful congressional candidate in his native Pennsylvania — was about to join it. In the 1980s, Chris was the top aide to House Speaker Tip O’Neill. I pissed him off by writing a 1982 article in the Washington Monthly entitled, “With Friends Like These…Tip O’Neill, Chuck Manatt and What’s Wrong with the Democrats.” It argued that Tip was too much of an old-fashioned liberal, Manatt (the DNC chair) was too corporate and the party needed a fresh direction. Even years later, after we became friends and I’d appeared on television with him many times, Chris never let me forget it. 

Now 76, Chris retired from hosting “Hardball” on MSNBC in 2020 and devotes himself to writing and lecturing. I still think that he and Howard Fineman, my Newsweek colleague for more than 25 years, know more about how politics actually works than any other journalists. But Chris and I disagree about what might lay ahead. He thinks Joe Biden and Donald Trump will have a rematch; I think neither will be his party’s nominee. We talk about that and more.

JONATHAN ALTER:

Hi, Chris.

We agree that talking about 2024 is wildly speculative and predictions are hazardous, but we’re gonna do it anyway this week because that’s what people are already talking about. I’m struck by two things: A July 2022 poll showing that two thirds of the Democratic Party think that Biden is too old to be president. And focus groups of Trump supporters where — even before the midterms — almost all of them are ready to go for Ron DeSantis.

CHRIS MATTHEWS:

I hear Biden’s making the decision very soon. 

JON:

You know what happens to frontrunners in the Democratic Party, Chris. It’s not pretty. Initially, nobody will oppose him. And then six or eight months from now, when he hits bumps in the road, some ambitious Democrat coming out of nowhere is going to say in a very upfront way, “Every profession has a retirement age. Sometimes it's 65. Sometimes it's 70. I think Joe Biden has been a good president. I don't disagree with him on most major issues. I just think that if he was working for an American corporation, no matter how great a CEO he was, he would have to retire well before age 86.” And that person will get a lot of people going, “You know what? That makes a lot of sense.” The people who claim that’s ageism are not going to have a very strong argument. So what do you think of that?

CHRIS MATTHEWS:

Joe Biden ran when he was 29 for the United States Senate. He beat an incumbent and he was way too young to be a US senator. [He was even too young to be eligible, until just after his election].

I've watched him for a long time. I think so many of these politicians are so inner-directed, so oblivious to what other people think, except their families. And I’ve watched him with Jill. And I get the feeling that she's encouraging him. 

JON:

Probably so, but somebody will still go, “I'm going to take a shot at this and make him debate me in the primaries.”

CHRIS MATTHEWS:

Is it someone that's important? Let's go with your theory. Is it going to be someone who could beat Trump if Trump is still running?

JON: 

Yeah, I think almost any sharp young Democrat can beat Trump. 

CHRIS MATTHEWS:

I'm not sure Biden will agree with that. I don't know whether Pete Buttigieg could run. It’s possible.

JON:

It would be ungracious to challenge him if you’ve been in his Cabinet. He’d look like a schmuck. And despite what I just said about almost any Democrat winning, I’m not sure Democrats can take the risk of nominating somebody who's a path breaker when we have to protect democracy by making sure that Trump doesn’t come back. Different story if Trump’s out. Then anyone can run. I think Gavin Newsom has the ego to do it. He has a kind of a brawling style that a lot of Democrats like. His problem is he looks like a stock villain in a made-for-TV movie and was married to Kimberly Guilfoyle. There will be many flavors of the month. Right now, there’s a lot of chatter about Gretchen Whitmer. 

CHRIS MATTHEWS:

I sat down with her and I think she's a grown-up, which is my highest praise for anybody. Grown-up! And I think that she is probably just about the perfect age to be running. But she would have to run against a sitting president. And I don't see it happening. I watched Ted Kennedy run [in 1980 against President Jimmy Carter] and I thought he had a good shot until Iowa.  I think it's very hard unless Biden has some serious mishaps. In the meantime, he is very energized by this [midterm] election.

JON:

I agree. But I see a comparison to LBJ in ‘68 [when Gene McCarthy challenged him in the New Hampshire primary, forcing Johnson out of the race], where Biden’s age is kind of like the Vietnam War without the bitter recriminations. It overshadows his accomplishments, as the war overshadowed LBJ’s. I think Democratic primary voters are just ready to have this election be about the future.

Same for the Republicans, which is why I figure DeSantis is going to get the nomination. The assumption that he’s another Jeb Bush or Scott Walker seems facile. And I think people are fighting the last war by assuming that Trump is going to just ride his base right to the convention. So many of his voters say the same thing: Trump did great stuff but he has too much baggage. Everyone’s a pundit now. And they think that DeSantis is a better way for them to come back into power.

CHRIS MATTHEWS:

There’s a difference between what we’d like people to do and what they do. We all wanted [New York Governor Mario] Cuomo to take a shot in ‘92. He didn't do it. 

JON:

I remember. I was sitting at the courthouse in Concord, New Hampshire waiting for him to come file his papers to run in the primary. The jet was sitting on the tarmac in Albany fired up. And he backed out.

CHRIS MATTHEWS:

Right. I think it's very hard to run for president unless you've got it built in you like Joe Biden. He has had that in his head since probably ‘72. Clinton had it in his head to run for president from a young age. Carter was already on the road  in ‘74. I had run for Congress and lost in the primary and Carter wrote me a letter — smart move for a guy [planning to] running for President.

JON:

In researching my book, I found out Carter decided to run the day after Nixon was re-elected in 1972 — four years before he was elected. But it was a secret then and until the fall of ‘75 (the equivalent of next fall), he wasn’t in the top 30 Democrats mentioned. So there could be an obscure Democrat out there we haven’t really thought of.  

CHRIS MATTHEWS:

I don't see this [someone challenging Biden] until somebody shows to me the absolute will to run for president — the desire to absorb all its costs, and all the fundraising.

JON:

Yeah, you have to really want it. And despite my Vietnam in ‘68 argument, if age is your only issue, that's not a very solid platform on which to challenge a sitting president. Now I’m arguing both sides!

CHRIS MATTHEWS:

Joe Biden has to be thinking about his age, too. He had to skip dinner the other night in Bali because he was watching what was going on with Russian artillery and the missile in Poland. He has to be asking himself, “Can I see doing this in six years?” A friend told me he’d observed there's a big difference between 80 and 85. Apparently at 80, a lot of the time you're still pretty good. You can move around a bit and you've got some operational ability. But by 85, by most people's standards, you start really slowing down. So Biden must have looked around and noticed that by the time people are in their mid-80s they're not really ready to be President of the United States any more. They're not really ready for the Cuban Missile Crisis — trying to figure out, what’s Khrushchev’s thinking? Do I answer the first letter, not the second letter [a key JFK decision]? Are we going to move toward disarmament by ‘63?  It's like playing basketball. You got to take the shot while you're jumping in the air, while you're swaying to the left and still magically hit the basket and swish from 30 feet away. How do you do that? You have to have all your wits about you. All your wits. 

So can he say to himself, to Jill, or to his sister [Valerie], “I will have all my wits [about] me in six freaking years, won’t I?” Now that's a hard answer to take.  I don't think it would be the right answer to say, “I will,” because you can't believe such a thing. You're a human being and you have an arc to your life. There will be a time when you're less able than now to do what you just did in Poland. You just made the right call. You're not going to start a [war] over this. Will Joe Biden be able to say, “You know, I'm just like everybody else. I've got no special [super human]  abilities. I'm not going to be able to do that at age 86.” I just don't think he's the kind of guy that does that kind of introspection. And he's done nothing to build up a successor. Nothing. 

JON:

Kamala Harris has a bigger problem. So many people in the Democratic Party think she's just not a good candidate. She's too coastal. She wouldn't do anything to get back the non-college educated voter. 

CHRIS MATTHEWS:

As a lot of minority voters point out, she has not been treated well. She's been given difficult assignments and no support. I think she has got the potential and personality that can sell but for some reason she never tells stories about herself — never tries to make herself interesting. This storyline of who you are is what makes people root for you. And it's never been developed because she has been so successful from District Attorney to Attorney General, to US Senator, to Vice President — it's all been way too fast. 

JON:

What did you think of Trump’s announcement?

CHRIS MATTHEWS:

Trump was so feverish, so angry. Even when he strolled around the stage before he spoke, he wanted to look angry, aggrieved, indignant, which is really the role of a latter-day autocrat, where they get so angry about failures of their army or failures of their people that they begin to hate the wrong people. This guy was in this “You're fired” mood. “I'm foreclosing the mortgage. I'm shutting you down. And you know it. You knew the rules you broke with me. Don't complain. You knew what you did wrong when you fought me, you people.” It was a menacing speech. 

The working guy is not happy with the way things are going. He didn't get to go to a college, or get any breaks. And that guy goes, “He's as angry as I am.” And that's always been his strength. And I think when he gets into a competition with three or four swells — Mike Pompeo, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley — they look better on their baseball cards than he does, but he'll still be the angriest guy out there. 

JON:

People say well, he came back after January 6th.  But there was no alternative, right? So I think it's possible that DeSantis and the donor base of the Republican Party will clear the field. And Pompeo and Chris Christie are going to find the same thing that Tom Cotton found, which is that they won't have any money if they try to run past the first couple of primaries because all the money is with DeSantis. 

CHRIS MATTHEWS:

Having been totally wrong about last week's election, I’m confidently predicting that won't happen. But we'll see.

JON:

The other reason that I would predict primary fights is that there's not going to be any legislation on the Hill. So the entire political media industrial complex is already focused on 2024. Listen to our conversation right now, right? Too many reporters chasing too few stories. And what they're going to obsess about are the head-to-head matchups. What I think is going to happen is that Trump and Biden will continue to be even money the way they have been for the last two years. But very soon you're gonna see polls that show DeSantis with a six or eight point lead over Biden. That will generate more talk about generational change.

So let's talk about Pennsylvania for a second. What happened there? 

CHRIS MATTHEWS:

I had Fetterman winning because he's likable. His openness about his stroke and the effects on his ability to pick up on regular conversation reminded me of Bobby Kennedy always saying, ‘Hang a light on your problem. Admit it.” By the way, I'm not sure his campaign was totally honest about the period when he first had the stroke around the time of the primary. But he made a good appeal. I was at these rallies with him in Delaware County. He just said to people, “Have you ever had a health problem in your family?”  And that really worked. The other guy [Mehmet Oz]  [lost] the election when he said I want this [abortion]  to be between you, your doctor, and some local politician — their committeeman, their precinct captain. I think that hurt immensely. The polling was off because I think people didn't want to say to the pollster, “I care about abortion.” It's too informative on a personal subject. So you say fuel prices because that's what the poll takers want to hear and it's not revealing.

JON:

Also the men don't want to say, “Well, I'm worried about getting my girlfriend pregnant.” But they are.  

CHRIS MATTHEWS:

That makes very sound sense. And I think parents — I don't care if you're middle class, Catholic, whatever — you do worry about every time you have a young person in your family going out at night. You're concerned about that [unwanted pregnancy] coming into play. And so I think people are very  generous about other people's situations, which may be their own at some point, and they allow for things. They recognize that things happen and you have to be prepared for them-–you have to have the freedom to deal with them. 

Democrats are now using a line where Trump is saying there needs to be some form of punishment for a woman who chooses an abortion. This is going to be a big problem for him. Roe v. Wade was the best thing that ever happened to Republicans because you could value the whole principle of life and at the same time be protected from dealing with the end of that right. They had it all.

JON:

We haven't talked about democracy being on the ballot this year. If the Democrats had not won the races to control election machinery in five states, the crazy election deniers would have not certified and the election would have gone to the House of Representatives where Trump or another Republican would win.

That was their coup plot for 2024 and the voters in the midterms foiled that plot.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: 

Look, I'm where you are but I think if they tried something like that, the people would have rebelled. They get that once we do vote, our vote protects our freedom and our freedom protects our vote. The idea that your state would be denied its electoral college votes because some secretary of state decides he wasn't going to sign the certificate is outrageous. When Trump said third world countries have cleaner elections, it was atrocious. It’s in places like Pakistan that they talk all the time about “fixed elections.” That's not us and that’s why I think the voters voted those people out. They all lost because they were basically running against democracy. They were attacking American democracy to American voters. And why would you be a voter if you thought it was all crooked? 

JON:

Back to abortion for a second. It was a great issue for them for 40 years.

CHRIS MATTHEWS:

Now there's so many states out west — even in Wyoming — where every young person will almost automatically become a Democrat because they want to fight that issue.

JON:

Right, and the Democrats didn't have time this year to get it on the ballot beyond Kansas and Michigan and a couple of others. But in 2024, there's going to be a ballot initiative on abortion in many states and it’ll drive Democratic turnout.

CHRIS MATTHEWS:

By then we will have many more case studies where a young person couldn't get an abortion despite rape or incest or things like that. They'll have had to go traveling to some other state and something will go wrong. I don't want to make an exact comparison, but it took a while to learn how bad Prohibition was. It was an idea that was pretty good, at least in concept, but not in practice. That's why I think we're gonna see a whole iterative process of cleaning it up, of coming back to a reasonable standard. The states that have complete bans are gonna have problems.

JON:

Do you think that the Paul Pelosi attack put decency on the ballot as well as democracy?

CHRIS MATTHEWS:

You know, I was speaking at a college recently and only one kid in the room knew about it. But I think the way the Republicans laughed about it — taking a light-hearted attitude to somebody being hit with a hammer on their head — I mean, how can you root for the home invader? What kind of a person are you? Everybody can imagine waking up at  two o'clock in the morning and having some deranged person assaulting them for something. And he’s a great guy. I've watched him all these years. He's a very supportive spouse. 

JON:

Before the election, I was more worried about the future of the United States than at any time in my life. And I thought there was a reasonable chance — maybe a  30 percent chance that Donald Trump could return to the White House.  I now believe without being Pollyannish that even though the nominee of a major party is always a threat to be elected, that as a practical matter, Trump has very little chance of being president again. I just think the country has rendered a verdict on him. 

CHRIS MATTHEWS:

If DeSantis does win the nomination, after a real battle, he could end up being a very strong candidate. Remember when George H.W. Bush defeated Dan Rather in a kind of TV debate? He really fortified himself in the later fight against [Michael] Dukakis. Sometimes the early fight in a place like New Hampshire is everything.  If DeSantis is able to defeat Trump, with all the yelling and pointing and hovering techniques he's used, the Democrats could find themselves with a real opponent, a 50-year-old guy, which is the right age to be president. 

JON:

Speaking of New Hampshire, Mitch McConnell just mentioned that Don Bolduc [the Trump candidate]  lost to Maggie Hassan because he got crushed by independents. If it's DeSantis versus Trump in the New Hampshire primary, you and I both know from long experience that those independents are going to go for DeSantis or someone else who is not Trump. 

At that point, the Democrats better hope that Trump, as Stuart Stevens says, then destroys DeSantis by telling his hardcore people to stay home. Recall that in 2016, he was the only Republican candidate who refused to pledge to support the nominee if it wasn’t him, and he got away with it. This would be in character since he’s already king of the sore losers.

Thanks, Chris.

I will be off next week for Thanksgiving.