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Biden Officials Fan Out To Tout Infrastructure Law; Judge Rejects Trump's Latest Bid To Dismiss Georgia Case; DNC Targets RFK Jr. In New Mobile Billboard Ad. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired April 04, 2024 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[12:31:55]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: It's all hands-on deck, or in this case, the campaign trail for the Biden administration. Today, six administration officials, including the Vice President, are fanning out across the country to tout how Biden's signature infrastructure law, bipartisan bill that passed, will help fund projects in different communities. It's part of a larger effort for the President to convince voters that his legislative achievements have actually earned him a second term in office. The question is, will voters buy it?

Joining me now to get into that and much more are Republican pollster Brenda Gianiny and Democratic pollster Terrance Woodbury.

Thank you so much. It's great to see both of you. Let's start with that question. We have talked before, and with you, just sort of non- stop since the infrastructure bill became law a couple years ago, about the question of whether and when voters are going to actually see and feel what he got done at home. Is that happening? Are you seeing it in your data?

TERRANCE WOODBURY, DEMOCRATIC POLLSTER: Well, look, infrastructure does represent a unique opportunity. It's not a sexy issue, but it is a bipartisan issue. It is a multifaceted, multicultural issue that reaches across demographics and geographics.

Unlike many issues, we have seen shift of one or two points because people are kind of hardened in their positions. Infrastructure has had the ability to shift by more than 10 points, increasing support for Joe Biden. I think that's because, one, it does not have the hyper- partisanship baggage, but also because it does have the -- because when you talk about it in terms of what we saw as the EEEs, the environmental impacts as the biggest investment to combat climate change in the world's history, not just the nation's history, but also the economic impacts, its ability to create infrastructure jobs right now and create competitive --

BASH: So that's the argument.

WOODBURY: That's right.

BASH: The question is whether it is penetrating. What do you think?

BRENDA GIANINY, PRESIDENT & FOUNDER, AXIS RESEARCH: I would say it is penetrating --

BASH: It is.

GIANINY: -- at a minor level. I have to give it to the Biden administration. As Terrance and I both know, on campaigns, the hardest thing to do is to tell somebody something they believe is true is not true. And that's what they were trying to do with Bidenomics, right? They were going out there, fanning around, saying, no, the economy is really good. And I think as Republicans, we were all very excited about that. We said, keep trying with that. That message is going to fail. So I think they were very smart to pivot to infrastructure.

And we saw, after the State of the Union, we saw a slight blip in the polls for Biden. And I think, nobody watches this speech, I think it was him getting out there and talking to real Americans and his roadshow. So I think this is going to help him.

BASH: So you say that there was a slight blip. I think the best thing that we have going here is CNN, our great political team, they do a poll of polls. And if you look at just starting in January through the end of last month, last week, really, yes, there was a slight uptick for Joe Biden, if you go back to, by one percentage point, back to January. But it's been relatively steady. What are you seeing that this does not actually illustrate?

[12:35:08]

WOODBURY: So Dana, you know, we started Hitch Strategy specifically to understand the opinions of voters underrepresented and misrepresented in public polling. And what we find is, in a lot of these public polls, that black voters are being both underrepresented and misrepresented. That when you look at some of these polls with a sample size of 1 or 200 black folks in it, then, you know, if you have 10 or 20 of them that are weird, and giving pollsters weird answers, then you have 10 or 20% of noise in that poll. And so larger sample size allows us to mute some of that noise. And so --

BASH: And you're doing some of that polling with larger sample sizes?

WOODBURY: Absolutely. So as opposed to seeing 20% of black support for Donald Trump, we're seeing closer to 9 to 12% black support for Donald Trump. So there is an increase. He is doing better amongst black voters. Trump is doing better amongst black voters, but not 10 or 20 points better than we've been seeing in some of the public polling.

BASH: What are you seeing inside some of these big questions of sort of the horse race question that maybe are getting masked in other ways?

GIANINY: A lot of it, to your point, you're correct. It's stagnant. It really started -- Joe Biden had a pretty small honeymoon. About six months in with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, he started losing younger voters. He started losing Hispanics. He started losing some black men. And it really has just -- it's sort of been a downhill effect from there.

Right now, the only movement we see is really Joe Biden's biggest challenge. He's building his coalition again. He's bringing Democrats back home. I think he can do it. I mean, the easiest thing to do is get a Democrat to vote for a Democrat and a Republican to vote for a Republican. But he has not done that yet. He does not have his base intact. So he's working and we're seeing the numbers start to move.

WOODBURY: And to that point, you know, we've seen that Donald Trump has consolidated 97% of his coalition, 97% of voters that previously voted for Trump said they're going to vote for him again. Joe Biden has only consolidated 85% of his coalition.

And so I think that represents two things. One is a huge opportunity to get Democrats to vote for a Democrat. But it also represents where we see this softness in his base with voters of color and young voters and continuing to deliver a message that we're asking.

BASH: So it's about motivating, which is the base and persuading, which is the people who are not really --

GIANINY: I think its bigger problem is motivating. And to your point, I would say all these young voters, maybe skeptical Democrats that voted for Joe Biden in 2020, he was never meant to be a two-term president. He was meant to, you know, stop the chaos, the circus of the Trump White House to, you know, not have the nonstop media cycle that was exhausting for everybody. So I think they're just not -- Democrats just not that I should be speaking for Democrats, but they just aren't excited about, you know, voting for him again.

WOODBURY: But the chaos is back, you know, and I think that as this campaign and as the cycle continues to materialize as a choice between returning to that chaos or continuing the progress, I do think Joe Biden will continue to --

BASH: And you're seeing that in the data that you're getting that?

WOODBURY: Yes, I do think he'll continue to consolidate that coalition.

BASH: All right. Great to have you both on. Please come back. Appreciate it.

Up next, Donald Trump and Nebraska Republicans want to change how that state awards electoral votes. There is a scenario that is very much in the realm of possibility that could make what happens in the Cornhusker State decide the entire presidential election. We'll explain after a break.

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[12:43:00]

BASH: Breaking news, the Atlanta judge who was dealing with Donald Trump's bid to get the Georgia election case dismissed. He said that Donald Trump can potentially deal with the free speech issue. Let's talk more about that with CNN's Sara Murray. Sara.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Dana, that's right. We heard these extensive arguments last week from Trump attorney Steve Sadow in Georgia, essentially arguing that the indictment in Georgia should be dismissed because Trump was merely engaging in political speech that was protected under the First Amendment, while the judge in Georgia today, Scott McAfee, said he is not going to dismiss the indictment against Donald Trump, and a number of his co-defendants essentially saying that this argument falls short.

Now, in many ways, this is not a surprise. We have seen other co- defendants in this case in Georgia try to make these First Amendment arguments. Scott McAfee, the judge, also rejected them in the case of the other defendants.

We've even seen these arguments made by Trump in the federal case. And we saw federal Judge Tanya Chutkan consider these First Amendment arguments and reject them there.

So, in many ways, this was not the motion that the Trump team was really hanging their hat on, was really hoping would lead to the end of the indictment. So the case continues against Trump in Georgia, Dana.

BASH: Yeah. Atlanta's case not dismissed.

MURRAY: Right.

BASH: Thank you so much, Sara. Appreciate that.

Now, imagine this, a 269 to 269 tie in the Electoral College. That could become much more likely if Nebraska changes how it awards electoral votes.

This week, Donald Trump and his allies are pressuring state lawmakers to do just that. Right now, it is one of two states that awards some of its electoral votes by congressional district. The other is the State of Maine. Switching to a winner-take-all system could strip Biden of an electoral vote that he won in 2020. And this election could very well come down to that single Electoral College vote.

CNN's Daniel Strauss is digging into this. Daniel, what are you learning?

[12:45:00]

DANIEL STRAUSS, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: Just that this is a big hurdle for advocates of changing the way Nebraska allocates delegates are trying to overcome. And part of it is just the very fact that this is how they've done it in Nebraska for a while now. It's very apparent to Democrats that there is a scenario where this election is super close and comes down to how Nebraska allocates votes. And they obviously don't want to give an advantage to Donald Trump that would swing the election against them.

At the same time, though, this bill is just running into all kinds of legislative and very technical hurdles, including that it wasn't blessed with a priority sort of label that in the Nebraska legislature is required at this point in their cycle for moving a bill forward.

Look, Dana, though, this is really important because Democrats and Republicans have been saying throughout the cycle this is going to be a very close election and it really could come down to just a few electoral votes, a few thousand votes in states that otherwise really haven't been attended to by either of the big campaigns.

BASH: Let's give our viewers a scenario here that is, again, not out of the realm of possibility at all. If Joe Biden wins that Nebraska vote, that one electoral vote, and he wins back, again, wins the so- called blue wall, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, you have 270 to 268. So he wins the presidency. Now let's see the scenario where that Nebraska law is changed, 269 to 269, an electoral college tie.

STRAUSS: Right, which goes to a whole different arena. And it puts us into a morass that we don't usually experience in electoral and campaign politics. That's why -- and this is entirely possible, we've seen in the past few election cycles that the blue wall is breachable and that states that are usually Republican leaning can be flipped, Arizona and Georgia. So it really could come down to a few electoral votes and it could come down to one congressional district in Nebraska.

BASH: Absolutely fascinating, and we are going to be watching to see what the Nebraska legislature does. Thanks so much for bringing this to us. Appreciate it.

And ahead, riddle me this, what do the Golden Girls and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have in common? Stay with us.

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[12:51:52]

BASH: Thank you for being a friend. The Democratic National Committee is taking a sarcastic swipe at independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., highlighting what they say is his lack of transparency about his campaign donors. Take a look.

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BASH: The panel is back. I got so excited, so verklempt about the idea of listening to the Golden Girls theme song that I lost my train of thought. What do you all think of this? Is this something that, I mean, obviously we're playing it and we're talking about it, it's clever, but it does go to the notion of a core argument that the DNC and the Biden campaign has, which is who's funding this guy? And isn't it just friends of Donald Trump?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. Well, it's this -- the person they're referring to is, I think, Tim Mellon, who's given gobs of money to both RFK and to Trump. And I think the point is that this is a guy who wants to hurt Joe Biden and look at who he's giving money to and he's not the only one, you know? YASMEEN ABUTALEB, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: I think that's exactly the point that they're trying to make, that this is another effort by Republicans to hurt Biden in the campaign. This is not a candidate to be taken seriously. But I have seen some reporting that there is concern among Republicans that RFK could hurt Trump as well with his anti-vaccine position, some of his libertarian position. So I think it's still a little bit unclear who he's more of a spoiler for, but that's obviously not the point the DNC is trying to make.

BASH: Right.

JACKIE KUCINICH, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, THE BOSTON GLOBE: But I think what their -- but I think what this does show, while they're not considering him a serious threat, which is why you have a supportive group of Biden that is taking on RFK Jr. And they know the margins in some of these states are going to be very narrow. The Trump campaign knows it too. You haven't seen them openly spending money to go after RFK Jr., but if it starts looking like he's going to cut into whatever numbers they have, I wouldn't be surprised that they're not far behind.

BASH: And the argument that he is making and what he's trying to tap into is dissatisfaction with both of the options that people have on the Democratic and Republican side. Listen to a little bit of what RFK Jr. told Erin Burnett this week on that issue.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., (I) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And if you vote for President Trump or President Biden, they both had their chance, you're going to get more of the same. If any -- if somebody needs -- if somebody actually wants change, wants to actually alter those issues, they're going to vote for me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I mean, I'm guessing that there are, I mean, we're not guessing, I know, we know from polls that there is a bigger segment than either campaign wants. That's very much open to that argument.

[12:55:00]

KUCINICH: Right. And I think you're right. But I also think that right now what you're seeing Democrats do, and to a lesser extent, Republicans, is trying to define him. I think because right now, very much the Kennedy name is what he is trading on. And knowing him as an individual is something that I know that Biden's allies are trying to push out there.

BORGER: You know, just the fact that he's there and you have these voters that are the so-called double haters is dangerous. It's just dangerous because people can decide at the last minute, you know what? I'll just throw it away and vote for Robert Kennedy Jr. no matter what.

BASH: We're going to have to leave it there. Thank you so much. Thank you for being a friend.

(LAUGHTER)

BASH: Thank you for joining INSIDE POLITICS. "CNN NEWS CENTRAL" starts after the break.

Before we go, a quick reminder, our live coverage of the eclipse starts Monday at 1 p.m. Eastern, right here on CNN or stream it on Max.

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