Can Americans still have a sensible and friendly political discussion across the partisan divide? The answer is yes, and we intend to prove it. Julie Roginsky, a Democrat, and Mike DuHaime, a Republican, are consultants who have worked on opposite teams for their entire careers yet have remained friends throughout. Here, they discuss the week’s events with Tom Moran, editorial page editor of The Star-Ledger.
Q. Despite polls showing Joe Biden with a commanding lead, every Democrat I talk to is terrified, remembering 2016. Any thoughts for them?
Julie: Terror is better than complacency, which is what led to the 2016 debacle. Vote early, if you can. Track your ballot to make sure it arrived at the Board of Elections. Make calls to Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan and other swing states. And pray that this Supreme Court doesn’t abrogate the count early.
Mike: Democrats should run terrified after Hillary Clinton ran the worst campaign in the history of America, botching an unlosable campaign.
Q. My colleague Paul Mulshine crossed the border to Pennsylvania, found enormous enthusiasm at a Trump motorcade, and noted that Biden’s average lead of just over 4 points is the same as Hillary’s was at this stage of 2016. How do you see Pennsylvania going, and how important is it?
Julie: I’ve been spending time in Pennsylvania recently and I agree that there are pockets where Trump signs seem to be on every lawn. But here is something to put a crimp in Paul’s narrative: More than 1 million voters have already cast their ballots in Pennsylvania. A whopping 73% of those are Democrats, of whom nearly a quarter did not vote in 2016. In Northampton County, which this newspaper has determined is the bellwether county in Pennsylvania, Democrats have returned over 68% of all ballots to date, compared with 47% at this point in 2016. Republicans will have to really turn out in the next ten days to compete with those numbers.
Mike: It’s true Pennsylvania has stayed closer to the 2016 polls than any other battleground state. What’s different this time is Trump is the incumbent now. He was much more like the challenger last time as the outsider against the establishment candidate. Late-breaking undecided voters broke heavily his way. Undecided voters most often break to the challenger. Also, he is not running against Hillary. Uncle Joe is simply more likeable and has roots in Pennsylvania.
Q. The New York Post published a scorching story on Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and China, based on the contents of a laptop computer provided to them by Rudy Giuliani. Most major media outlets have concluded the material is not reliable, and some Post staffers who worked on the story removed their bylines from it in protest. What do you make of this?
Julie: Rudy Giuliani sure spends a lot of time hanging out with Ukrainians who are agents of Vladimir Putin, which is sad for a man once known as America’s Mayor. But this is generally a bunch of nonsense that isn’t going to sway anyone’s vote. Almost a quarter million Americans have died from a global pandemic, our economy is in shambles and kids can’t go back to school in many places. No one cares about Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop – especially when daddy’s little girl Ivanka is monetizing her job in the White House to fast-track dozens of patents from China for her private business.
Mike: Biden hasn’t really answered any of these questions or refuted the facts, but Julie’s main point is correct. It doesn’t really matter. People don’t care about Hunter Biden. They care about COVID, the economy and maybe the Supreme Court. Almost nothing else matters to voters right now. Attacks on family members generally backfire anyway.
Julie: You know better than that, Mike. If Biden were to respond, he would just be giving this ridiculous story oxygen. He isn’t here to do Putin spokesman Dmitri Peskov’s work for him.
Mike: Biden has smartly avoided most questions of substance this year. (I’m mostly serious. If he thinks he is safely ahead, he wants to invite no controversy whatsoever.)
Q. Here in New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy vetoed a bill that would require all police officers to wear body cameras, saying the $55 million cost is too much. Explain that one, please.
Julie: I profoundly disagree with the governor’s veto. If he didn’t like where the funding was coming from, his staff should have communicated that to the legislature early, so they could have come up with a mutually acceptable funding source. Because of that failure to communicate (again), this veto stands as a major blow against police accountability at a time when the Black Lives Matter movement continues to shine a spotlight on these issues. It is a horrible decision governmentally and it is an equally horrible decision politically.
Mike: Please, didn’t New Jersey just borrow like a gazillion dollars for this year’s state budget? Seriously this is like one-tenth of one percent of our state budget. Cost can’t be the issue.
Q. Murphy also fired the directors of the two state-run Veterans’ homes where hundreds died, the worst of the nursing home disaster in the state. Will that protect the governor from political damage?
Julie: Those directors are not on the ballot next year. Phil Murphy is.
Mike: The state, not the directors, ordered nursing homes to take in COVID-positive patients. COVID-positive patients were ordered into a closed environment filled with our most vulnerable Americans. This was the single biggest mistake in NY and NJ’s handling of the crisis. Nursing homes were handed an impossible situation, made worse by the state’s directive. Most nursing home workers acted heroically in the face of an unfolding catastrophe not of their own making.
Q. Finally, the new Borat movie. Giuliani falls for a fake interview, follows the young woman conducting it into a hotel bedroom, and is filmed with his hands down his pants, which he said was innocent. Mike, I know you once worked for him, and that I shouldn’t enjoy this so much, but this one I’m definitely renting. Thoughts?
Julie: I will leave it to the men in this column to tell us whether a man putting his hands down his pants in the presence of a young woman in a hotel bedroom is ever innocent. The answer to this question is above – or maybe below – my paygrade.
Mike: This is a family column, so I will not dignify Tom’s schadenfreude with a response.
A note to readers: DuHaime and Roginsky are both deeply engaged in politics and commercial advocacy in New Jersey, so both have connections to many players we discuss in this column. Given that, we will not normally disclose each specific connection, trusting that readers understand they are not impartial observers. DuHaime, a principal at Mercury Public Affairs, was chief political advisor to former Gov. Chris Christie, and has worked for Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and President George W. Bush. Roginsky, a principal of Optimus Communications, has served as senior advisor to campaigns of Cory Booker, Frank Lautenberg and Phil Murphy. Henceforth, we will disclose specific connections in the text only when readers might otherwise be misled, at the discretion of the editors.
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