And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome back to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be

joined again today by Doug Salznick, the veteran Democratic

strategist, political director in the Clinton White House,

from I think six years of the Clinton presidency, 1994 to 2000, advised on dozens of Democratic

campaigns over the years, often very successfully.

I really widely regarded and respected in Washington as not just a political

strategist who knows the ins and outs of campaign tactics, but a real thinker about American

politics, the two parties, where we've been where we're going, people look forward to as monthly

memos, which lay out some of its thinking on this.

A very good piece in the New York Times earlier this week. We're speaking on what, the 14th of

February and so on sort of Biden and Trump. Anyway, we had a conversation about what six

seven months ago and that stands up well too so Doug thanks for joining me again.

Thanks Greg, great to be here. Okay so Doug well let's just be able to talk where we are in the election, Biden and Trump, and that a little bit more broadly, since you're so good at that too, at the sort of where's the, not just where's the election, but where's the country and what things might happen that might surprise us but

where where's the race I mean you've you've been through so many of these give give us the kind of

the briefing well I think if you think about where we are today compared to the last time we spoke in early June, I would say two things

are kind of cross-currents.

One is, in one way the race hasn't really changed in the sense is that both Biden and Trump have obviously solidified their positions as the likely nominees and I think there was probably a fair amount of skepticism back last June about whether these two guys would actually emerge out of this process and be the nominees and it appears they are and I think for different reasons by the way I think Trump

is going to be the nominee largely because of his support with the base of the party

and despite the fact there are a lot of Republicans who don't really want to support them,

they feel forced to because they fear the political retribution of Republicans at the base level.

And in the case of Biden, of Republicans at the base level.

And in the case of Biden, his support ability

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