Ep. 418 — David Plouffe

The Axe Files with David Axelrod

CNN

News

4.6 • 7.7K Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2020

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

David Plouffe is a veteran Democratic political strategist who served as Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign manager and later as senior advisor to President Obama. Just days after the 2020 race was called, David sat down with his former business partner and longtime collaborator to break down last week’s election, discuss how Joe Biden rebuilt the blue wall, why he was the best candidate for this moment and the challenges that await the Biden administration and the broader Democratic Party.

To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Music
0:06.0	And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axfiles with your host, David Axelrod.
0:20.0	One of the great partnerships that I've had in my life has been with David Pluth.
0:25.0	He was the business partners in the campaign media world. He was the manager of the Barack Obama campaign in 2008 when I was the chief strategist.
0:34.0	We've traveled a lot of miles together and we've been able to be part of some great things.
0:39.0	And he is one of the sharpest and most incisive and most thoughtful thinkers about American politics on this planet.
0:47.0	So I thought it'd be great to sit down with my old friend in the wake of this election and talk about what we've seen and where we think things are going. Here's that conversation.
1:04.0	My old buddy, my old partner, David Pluth, it's good to see you on the other side of this election. How you doing? First of all?
1:14.0	It's been four long years, Ax, for us in the country. So I tell you, I was confident this time we're talking Monday afternoon.
1:23.0	I felt confident heading to the election, but I feel, you know, I've been waiting for this kind of moment for four years and it feels a lot better than I thought it would, which is something.
1:34.0	Yeah, there was this sense of relief at least in half the country in the other half of the...
1:41.0	...despondency. Yes.
1:43.0	Yeah, which is, you know, I want to talk about that, but we'll get to that because that is a challenge for the country. It's a challenge for Biden.
1:50.0	It's a challenge for Democrats down the line. But talk to me about how you, I mean, let's share our thoughts about how Biden put this thing together.
2:03.0	How did he? And could anybody else have put it together in retrospect?
2:08.0	I'm not sure they could have not of that field. I mean, Trump ended up producing such strong turnout and holding on, and in some cases building on his rural margins.
2:17.0	Yeah.
2:18.0	So it took, I mean, let's just look at Pennsylvania. Now let's be...
2:21.0	You and I both know we're not going to know what really happened in this election for months, but it's going to begin to get 100% of counties in.
2:27.0	You know, you have a better picture separate from the exits.
2:30.0	You know, Pennsylvania, I think he added 260,000 votes in those four counties outside of Pennsylvania.
2:36.0	He wins back Erie, wins back Northampton County, does better in the blue collar areas.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from CNN, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of CNN and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.